STRANGE HOSPITAL CASE.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 July 1920, Page 2

STRANGE HOSPITAL CASE.

A PATIENT'S DELUSION. A curious ease of how the mind can on occasion triumph over the body wag mentioned at a meeting o£ the South Canterbury Hospital Board last week. A resident of the country wrote to the board complaining that he had sent his wife to the Timaru Hospital with a poisoned hand, for treatment. The resident medical officer (Dr. Fraser) had operated on the hand and discharged the patient two days later. She left that day for her home by train, but Qn the journey she had to be taken off the train and placed in a private hospital, where a doctor had been called in to operate again on her liand. The husband desired to know why an operation at a private hospital was necessary after his wife had been discharged from the public hospital? Dr. Fraser said the explanation was that the woman was suffering from hysteria and not from a poisoned hand. Her temperature was normal, and though he had operated on her hand twice (expecting to find pus there on account of the intense pain of which she complained) he could find nothing wrong with it. A letter was received from the country doctor .who had operated on the hand after Dr. Fraser, stating that he too diagnosed the ease as one of hysteria. He found no signs of pus, but allowed the patient to think that he had done so, and after this she recovered. The board accepted theiT medical officer's explanation as quite satisfactory.