San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1926-04-11


but here is apparently an unfortunate
who holds the worlds record of fifty
three amputations that he has undergone,
one after the other.
The patient with this undesired emf
hence is Albert FroidevauX, a native of
Switzerland and only thirty-six years old.
He is now reduced by these successive
choppings to little more than a head and
trunk; yet what is left of him is, at the
moment, seemingly in perfect health. Is he
I cured at last? That is something that no.
body knows. The surgeons hold out hope
that perhaps he has come to them for the
last time, but they have told him that
forty-eight times before, so Albert no
longer pays much attention to them. More
surgical work probably remains to be done
for him.
One curious result of these everlasting
trips to the operating table is that ether
and chloroform have lost much of their
effect, the patient has become almost i'm
mune to many narcotic drugs. The anaes-
thetist and the nurses watch in dismay
while enough ether or chloroform is poured
into the cone over his face to kill an or
binary man, and yet Albert's muffled
voice tells them that he is not even drowsy.
They give him dose that would be fatal
to horse, and still he gives wide-awake
replies through the cone. Frequently the
nurses themselves become dizzy from the
fumes in the room and have to be relieved
by others before the hardened nerves of
the patient finally yield.
The disease from which he suffers is
known to medicine as "symmetric gan
grene," rare and obscure ailment, al
most unheard of except in the tropics.
The doctors have given the malady name,
but that is about ALL No medicine, diet
or treatment has the slightest effect. 1t
was thought by some that it might be
related to leprosy, because of its slow at
tack upon the extremities of the body, but
this is now proved to be wrong. Leprosy
is known to be a germ disease and often
yields to chaulmoogra oil, while symmetric
gangrene yields to nothing.
One thing, however, is known-how the
disease was contracted. Froidevaux, an
unusually healthy, muscular young man.
joined the French Foreign Legion, and
after a year or two was sent to French
Indo-China, where the government was
having trouble with the Annamites and
pirates of certain tribes. Encamped
in an isolated place and subject to raids
% srb% H. 10 Ill
mails, Froidevaux's detachment built a
stockade around their camp. The handiest
material for this was bamboo, and the
soldiers, without fear, tackled the nearest
ones, for who would be afraid Of tree?
However, bamboo is not really tree,
but a monster blade Of grass, or, at least,
a relative of the grasses, and some are poi
sonous. The natives could have told them
this, for they use these bambOos to make
poison arrows, but the sullen Orientas told
the superior, know-it-all white man moth
ing. When Froidevaux ran a little bam-
boo splinter into his first finger, he picked
it out, sucked the tiny puncture and went
on with his work. If that same thing had
happened 10 a native he would not have
wasted an instant before cutting off his
own finger.
That night the soldiers sleep was dis
turbed by throbbing pain, and in the
morning the finger was black and swollen.
The army doctor, fresh from Algeria,
treated it for ordinary blood poisoning,
but the pain and the swelling increased
The patient was sent TO hospital, where
they recognized the thing for what il was
and at once amputated the trigger finger
a pretty serious loss for a soldier. This
was the first and one of the least Of fifty
three such operations which have gone On
during the sixteen years to date.
The pain stopped at once, the wound
healed nicely, and the patient was sent
back TO barracks suppOsing that he would
never be bothered again. The doctors
encouraged him in thinking this because
there was perhaps one chance in Z hun
dred that it might be true. They did not
wish 10 brighten him with the knowledge
that in his veins was the unknown poison
that never fails 10 bring down even the
tiger The native, in hunting the great
cat, is content if he manages to prick the
skin with one of his seemingly futile little
a rrOws of bamboo, for he knows that in
a few days or weeks he will hear il scream
ing with agony in the jungle, and finally
Il will die.
For several months FrOidevaux lived a
healthy, outdoor life, eating and sleeping
veil and having a fine time, while his
officer though he did not know IL were