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Show ' . Surgeon Saves Life of Unborn Baby After Long Vigil for Mother's Death PHILADELPHIA, Aug. (UP) ' A girl baby, smaller than a man' hat struggled desperately ' In Philadelphia general hospital today to retain the gift of life -conferred upon tt by death: The child, delivered surgically one minute after Mrs. Mary Boc-cawsini, Boc-cawsini, 27, auccumbed to tuber cular meningitis, waa too feeble to breathe without assistance. For eight hours- it lay In an oxygen tent fashioned from X-ray film. At 11:40 a. m. it was taken out and, tor time,- breathed ; normally. Then the tiny lung faltered and It waa neceaaary to return the child to the tent. I ' While on It own, however, the Infant took Ita first meal one I dram of a aterile augar water ad- ministered by a nurse through an I eyedropper. The babyT-temperalurn09." at birth, fell to 101 after feeding, feed-ing, and Dr. John Corblt, resident obstetrician who - performed the ' post-mortem caesarlaa operation , before dawn, aald Ita chances of living were becoming steadily greater. The baby's birth climaxed duel between two forces of nature ' one creative, the other destructive destruc-tive within the mother's body. At 1:19 a. m. E. D. T.) today , the destructive force won. The surgical instruments had been sterilised and Dr. John Corblt, resident obstetrician; his assistant assist-ant and nurses - were waiting. Sixty seconds later the life that had been condemned with Mrs. Boccawaini's life, waa saved by science. Mrs. Boccawslnra temperature waa 109.4 degrees at death. Her baby waa born with a high temperature, tem-perature, small and frail, and began be-gan breathing with difficulty. ' By J a. m. her temperature had fallen to 10J.f and her tiny black eyes were open for the first time. "The baby Is expected to live," , Dr. Corblt announced. "Oxygen . la being administered to her." The baby could not be weighed at once, but aha was estimated to weigh between three -and four pounds. Dr. Corblt aald there was only slight possibility of the baby having been Infected by her mother's disease, Tuberculosis Is not an hereditary disease, though one may Inherit tendency toward It "We are going to feed her wtta tube, but wa won't attempt it " iOeaUno-4 ea paae rear) (Ooiurna Two Science and Law Unite,1 Give Unborn Baby Life ( . . '" V Ha , (CoottmwS troia Psse Out) until later today," tha obstetrician obstetri-cian aaid. A tiny oxygen tent, which Dr. Corbit made of X-ray film, was placed ever th head of tha, little girl unnamed as yet Her temperature tem-perature had fallen to 104 degrees 'several hours after birth. "Th child la apparently very sturdy," one of the nurses who assisted Dr. Corbit said. "She lived through a temperature of 1M.4. It's a wonder she wasn't parboiled." par-boiled." Tha husband and father, Dominic, Dom-inic, waa not at th hospital. He had consented to the postmortem Caesarian only after the commonwealth com-monwealth of Pennsylvania had ruled that It waa proper and could be performed vsithout hla permission. permis-sion. There hed been two nights and a day of anxiety. During that time Mrs. Boccawsini had been In the procesa of dying and th destructive de-structive force within her waa maater. She waa unconscious, her temperature waa mounting, her pulae alowing and a nurse sat be-elde be-elde her bed waiting for th Instant In-stant of death. Then, auddanly, tfit creative fun a offered battle. Labor began, but too lata. Law Aide Baby Mrs. Boccawsini was admitted to th hospital's tubercular ward July 2T. Tha eouraa of her die-ease die-ease advanced hand In hand with th development of th unborn child. Wednesday night death approached ap-proached and she waa moved into tha maternity ward. Then her husband asserted bis authority. If tha mother died, he aaid, th baby would have to die with her. It was th will of Cod; there could be no operation. Ordinarily, hospitals must be guided by th wish of th patient, or If th patient la beyond expression, ex-pression, by tha wlah of th nearest near-est of kin. In this case th hospital hos-pital aaked City Solicitor O. Coa Carrier to give an opinion on Its legal position. He referred it to Common Pleas Court Judg Harry K. Kalodnsr, who found an old court ruling which held that an unborn baby had certain legal right. Therefore, he reasoned, to permit an unborn child to die unnecessarily un-necessarily would ba illegal. Father Persuaded That decided, tha hospital and Dr. Corbit, a aerious giant, only M years old, who finished his Intarneahlp in th asm hospital only July 1, prepared for the rare postmortem Caesarian operation which gives a surgeon only eight minutes to work if he Is to take a liv baby from a dead mother' body successfully. In that tima tha blood stream, which had been propelled by a now stilled hurt, loses Its momentum and eeaaea to carry life sustaining oxygen to th baby. Tha baby than suffocates. suffo-cates. In th hospital corridor, Dominic, Dom-inic, a swarthy, heavy set and unshaven man, who cam to this country from Itsly In 1820 and arna a bar living as a sugar mill worker, lingered yesterday, utterly ut-terly bewildered. Reluctantly, h seconded th Judge's opinion; the operation could ba performed, but only after tha mother had died. "But If tha baby lives, the doctors doc-tors will have to keep it," he aaid. "I got to work. I can't work and take car of a baby. If Mary dies, I got no place to take baby. But they better not do nothing to Mary while ah Uvea. That's what I don't want." Must Await Death An operation on th living mother was impossible, because, though ehe waa doomed, aha would have died instantly of shock and, technically. Judge Kalodner ruled, th operative surgeon would have been liable. So tha painful wait went on a tiny, whit room furnishsd only with a cot, where the unconaclous woman, waatsd but young looking despite th fever that was burn- MRSrMART"BOOrAW"TVl Baby Born After Death Come Ing her body, lay still, her nerves deadened with opiatea, dying by inches, and a chair in which a nurse eat waiting. Now and than Dr. Corbit catered and took her temperature, counted her pulae, lietened through hia atethoecopa to tha sturdy heart beats of th child. He had made arrangements arrange-ments for th operation In th adjoining room, but a tha mother's temperature mounted th equipment was moved into th same room to save th precious pre-cious seconds when ths time came. Shortly after S a. m. today a nurse ran up to Dr. Corbit in tha corridor. "Com quickly, doctor. Speedy Operation Ha ran Into th room. Th mother had died an Instant before. be-fore. Another nurse had summoned summon-ed his assistant. Dr. Sally Young-man. Young-man. Tha body was lifted onto the operating table. Th table of atarilized instruments, gauzes and towels, was wheeled In. Rubber glovea were slipped onto th powerful pow-erful fingers of th surgeon, masks wera adjuatad, a nurse listened to the baby's heart beats pounding pound-ing through th mother's dead body. Sixty aeconds later th baby waa born. Mrs. Boccawsini was 27 years old, a native of West Virginia. She had been tubercular and frail for years and had been a patient In th hospital's charity ward before. be-fore. Meningitis developed and when ah was taken to th hospital hospi-tal ah was In a dying condition. She and Boccawsini had been married several years. He had to pay much of his small Income for doctors and medicines for her. By a previous marriage h has two children, Isabelle, 12, and Serge, 10. The girl lived with the family, but tha boy is in a Catholic Cath-olic orphanage. The Caesarian operation la surgically sur-gically termed a "section." It tskes Its nsme from the legend that Julius Caesar owed his birth to It. It has been practiced on dead mothers for centuries and Roman law prescribed it for every woman who died in an advanced stage of pregnancy. The first recorded re-corded instance of Ita use on a living woman was In the sixteenth century, and It was performed many times thereafter, but almost al-most always with fatal results to the mother from either sepsis or hemorrhage. Modern surgical technique par tlcularly the introduction of asepsis asep-sis has greatly reduced the mortality mor-tality rate and the operation is not unusual. |
