SINGULAR MEDICAL OPERATION.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2450, 24 March 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

SINGULAR MEDICAL OPERATION.

The London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian reports what he describes as the nine days' wonder of professional circles. The little daughter of a well-known Roman Catholic writer on evolution and similar subjects was sucking a pencil which had a metal guard. She accidently sucked the guard off the pencil, and it slipped down her windpipe to her lung. There it remained, completely stopping up one of the principal air tubes, which it exactly fitted. It was then endeavoured, by making the child cough violently, and by similar methods, to force the sheath back again up tho windpipe into the mouth ; but it was too firmly embedded, and all attempts to dislodge it failed. Meanwhile the little patient could breathe perfectly with the untouched lung, and suffered no inconvenience. The prospect however, was that the foreign body in the air-tubs would presently set up irritation and cause an abcess, which, from ita position, would cause serious results. It waa, therefore, determined to operate. The chest was opened, the sheath was extracted from the air-tube, and the wound closed. The operation was absolutely novel, and a special instrument had to be made for the purpose. It was completely successful, and the distinguished operator is at the present moment quite the hero of surgical society.