The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1906-09-21
dead" MAN REEVES
Returns to Earthly Existence
After Being Given Up by
Hospital Surgeons.
HEART ACTION SUSPENDED.

Patients Life Pronounced Extinct and
Body Ordered Taken Away When He
Calls For Restorative-Saved After
Two Hours Artificial Respiration.
Survives Despite Fractured Skull.
New York, Sept 21-Edward Nc
Glroon of Yonkers, n Y, came back
to life after lying apparently dead in
a hospital for half an hour with stilled
respiration, heart that had ceased
beating and body that already had
grown cold.
The case is one of the most remarka-
BILE in the medical annals Of the world.
Never before when it had been demon
strated by all known tests of modern
surgery and medicine that body was
bereft of life has it been resuscitated.
But, testifying in the Yonkers police
court in the case of the people against
Fire Commissioner Burns of Yonkers
accused of assaulting McElroon, DR.
George Rublee of ST. Josephs hospi-
tai declared that under the eyes of the
entire hospital staff the man had re
turned from death to life.
Patient Pronounced Dead.
McElroon, who is over six feet tall
and man Of great strength, was tax
en- to the hospital unconscious from
two blows which Burns had struck up
on his head, inficting a compound
fracture. With the surgeons and
nurses of the hospital assembled about
the operating table DR.. Rublee had
just begun to drill into the terribly
injured skull when a fellow surgeon
told him it would be useless to go
farther with the operation, as the pa
tient was unquestionably dead.
DR.. Rublee says he applied every
known test. McElroon's heart had
ment of respiration All hope was
given up after half an hour, when it
was found that the body was cold.
The physicians began to clean their
instruments and sent for porter to
carry the body away.
"Dead" Man Speaks.
They were startled by a gaspine
breath from the operating table. The
dead man had moved one arm from
his side to his injured head and in a
wheeling, smothered voice whispered:
For Gods sake. give me salt"
The hardened doctors shrank~ away
from the sight of this miracle, and two
of the nurses screamed and almost
tainted But in moment DR.. Rublee
hurried back to the operating table.
Something in the instructive call of,
nature for help when death and life'
were battling had prompted the man
to cry out for the saline solution, which
is known among all medical men as the
one drug that comes nearest to restor
ing life.
Saved by Hard Work.
When the salt had been injected into
an artery the surgeons started artifi-
ciai respiration. After two hours hard
work McElroon, although still uncon-
scious, showed sufficient signs of re-
turning life to be removed to bed,
where, with the aid of blankets and
powerful drugs, artificial heat was put
into the body that had been cold, and
the heart began to beat.
For several days the big man hover
ed on the verge of death that had once
claimed him, but finally nature and the
ministrations of the doctors won their
case and he began to recover rapidly.
Although his head is still a mass of
scars where his skull was fractured,
McElroon appears as strong and as
healthful as ever.
The court was so impressed with
the resurrection of the man that he ad-
journed the case for week.