The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-08-06
Surgeons Perform
 Caesdrian Operation
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Dr. Corbit said that there was only a slight possibility of the baby hav- ing been infected by her mothers disease. Tuberculosis is not hered- itary disease, though one may in- herit tendency toward 1t.
 "The child apparently is very sturdy" one of the nurses who as- sisted Dr. Corbit said. "She lived through temperature of 109.4. It's a wonder she wasn't parboiled."
 Father Not Present
 The husband and father, Dominic. who had consented to the post mortern caesarian only after Nne commonwealth of Pennsylvania had ruled that it was proper and could be performed without his perIniS-. sion, was not at the hospital.
 There had been two nights and day of intensified anxiety. Dur- ing that time, Mrs. Boccawsini had been in the process of dying and the destructive force within her was master. Its victim had been rend- cred unconscious, her temperature was mounting, her pulse slowing, and a nurse sat beside her bed waiting for the instant of death. Then, suddenly, the creative force offered a battle. Labor began and her body struggled to give birth, but too late.
 Disease Advanced
 Mrs. Boccawsini, in the ninth month of pregnancy, was admitted to the hospitals tubercular ward July 27. The course of her disease advanced hand in hand with the development of the unborn child. Wednesday night death approached and she was moved into the mater nity ward for the inevitable. Then her husband asserted his authority. If the mother died, he said, the baby would have to die with her. It was the will of God; there could be no operation.
 Ordinarily, hospitals must be guided by the wish of the patient, or if the patient is beyond express sion, by the wish of the nearest of kin. In this case, the hospital ask ed City Solicitor G. Coe carrier to give an opinion on its legal posi- tion. He referred 1t to common please court Judge Harry E. Ka- lodner who found an old court rul- ing which held that an unborn baby had certain legal rights and could properly sue for injuries suf- , fered by its mother which adverse ly affected it while still in her womb. Therefore, he reasoned, to permit an unborn child to die un- necessarily would be illegal.
 Prepared For Operation
 That decided the hospital and Dr Corbit, tall, serious giant, only 28 years old who finished his intere- ] ship in the same hospital only on July l, prepared for the rare post mortem caesarian which gives surgeon only eight minutes to work if he is to successfully take a live baby from dead mothers body. In that time the blood stream pro- pelled by now stilled heart, loses Its momentum and ceases to carry life-sustaining oxygen to the baby The baby then suffocates.
 Slowly during yesterday and last night, the minutes and hours dragged by. In the hospital corridor, Dominic, swarthy, heavy-set and unshaven man who came to this country from Italy in 1920 and earns bare living as a sugar mill worker, fingered, utterly bewildered | by the strange drama that had eY. compaSsed his life.
 Father Was Reluctant
 Reluctantly, he seconded the judges opinion; the operation could be performed, but only after the mother had died.
 But if the baby lives, the doc tors will have to keep it," he said, T got to work. I can't work and take care of a baby. I: Mary dies, cot no place to take baby. But they better not do not ing to Mary while she live. That's what I don't