Valdez daily prospector., 1914-06-16
HALTS HEART
 AND REPAIRS IT..
Dr. Carreps Feat Holds Out
 Hope of va|vu|ar Cure.
EXPER|MEN1EO WITH DOCS.

All Circulation Suspended For Two and one-haIf Minutes, and Daring oper- ation Proves Successful Another Amazing Feat of Surgery Saves Boy With Bullet In Vital Organ. Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute For Medical Research, whose epochal achievements in original fields of medical research won for him the Nobel prize in 1912, has further as- tonished the scientific world by de- scribing before several hundred mem- bers of the American Surgical associa- tion in convention ill New York and some half hundred distinguished for etSn surgeons, guests of the asSocia- tion, successful experimental opera tons performed on the valves of the hearts of animals. These operations were remarkable from any standpoint, but they must be considered as amaz- ing and unrivaled procedures when it is remembered that they were carried on under these conditions:
 All circulation in the heart was sus- pended by the simple but bold means of applying large clamps to all the blood vessels entering and leaving the heart; circulation was suspended for the comparatively brief period of two and one-half minutes; hence it was necessary to complete each operation within that time. and each operation was performed through .an opening fin the wall of the heart only one and one half inches in length.
 The surgeon was careful to impress upon his auditors the fact that these heart operations were strictly experi- mental; that they had been performed upon dogs only, and that they were not applicable to human patients.
 Foresees Ultimate Triumph.
 Nevertheless these two sentences, taken from the investigators manu- script. indicate significantly his hopes for the future:
 "As it is the object of these opera tions that they be ultimately applied to human surgery, it was primarily necessary to accumulate about the operative procedure a number of fac tors of safety.
 Tt is to be hoped that this tech nique may by degrees be applied to human surgery. and it is not at al! impossible that some day surgeons will be able to cauterize the lesions of the valves and repair them as easily or almost as easily as we do today in cur experimental operations. The en- trance of air into the heart is highly dangerous"
 Dr. Carrel has been able to do away with this painful and dangerous con- plication by rapidly introducing sterile silk towels through the external sur gical wound and covering the pleural membranes with them. In this man. ner filtered air only reaches the mem branes. and such infectious material as may be floating in the atmosphere cannot get to the pleura.
 The towels. moreover, act as ab- sorbents and take up such fluids as may develop in the course of the op- erations and which it is desirable to have removed.
 Bullet In Heart, Saved by Surgery.
 Professor Robert Proust of Paris made report bearing directly on the subjects discussed by Dr. Carrel. with the difference that it dealt with a hu- man patient. It was entitled Distant Results of Suture of the Heart Fol lowing Wound by Pistol Shot," He recounted the case of a boy of fifteen years who was accidentally shot in the heart by playmate. Dr. Proust cut away parts of several of the ribs and then made an incision in the peri cardium. which is the membran0nS sac covering the heart.
 The surgeon found within the peri cardial sac a mass of coagulated blood the size of fist. This he extracted through the incision he had made. Then he found the pistol ball. lying in the bottom of the pericardial sac. and removed that also.
 Having cleared the pericardium of the bullet and clotted blood, the sur geon had better. opportunity to ex anime the heart muscle itself. He found wound in the heart in the front, near the left border and quite near the apex He closed the wound in the heart itself with four deep stitches and then covered these with another and more superficial series. Next the surgical opening in the peri cardium was stitched up, the shattered chest wall was repaired, and in month the boy was discharged from the hos pital cured,