AMAZING OPERATION

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20284, 28 August 1937, Page 23 (Supplement)

AMAZING OPERATION

GIVEN A NEW HEART. NOW A BRIDEGROOM. A year ago: Doomed to die from Incurable heart trouble. Six months ago: Tissue taken from his chest and grafted on his heart to form new arteries. To-day: A bridegroom. This is the dramatic story of 63-years-old Matthew Mason, “miracleman” of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who at St. Peter's Church, Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, married Mrs Hepzibah Bennett, aged 58, a widow, of Elms Road, Sutton Coldfield. Mrs Bennett, who has six children and four grandchildren, wrote to Mr Mason to congratulate him oil his recovery. This was the start of their romance. Mr Mason said: “I have attained a happiness which a short while ago I thought belonged to another world. There was something about my wife’s letter to me that gave it a different stamp from all the others that came from sympathisers. I don’t know what it was, but the outcome was that I was invited to visit her at Sutton Coldfield and stay there with her son and daughter. “I have got work in Birmingham as a carpenter." A Newcastle surgeon, Mr George Mason, performed a new, rarely tried operation at the Newcastle General Hospital. He took strips of the fatty tissue, full of blood-vessels, that line Ihe “floor’’ of the chest and “grafted" them to tlie heart. They Joined up with tlie heart’s blood-vessels.