RESTORED TO LIFE
BY MANIPULATION.
STARTLING RESULTS IN SERIES
OF EXPERIMENTS.
Scientific World Profits Through
the Research of a Former Kan-
sas City Physician, Dr.
Thomas Bennet.
An article in the last issue of the Medical Record calling attention to a remarkable series of experiments upon human beings in New York city whereby seventeen persons whose heart action had stopped, were resuscitated by manipulating the heart with the hand to induce artificial contraction of the ventricles, recalls to physicians that the incept of the idea at the bottom of this experiment is due to Dr. Thomas Bennet of New York, who performed the same experiment upon a hog while in this city twelve years ago.
Dr. Bennet, who was at that time professor of anesthetics in the University Medical college, was one of the first men to specialize in this branch of science. He is now ranked as one of the leading anesthetists in the world and is head of that department in the Roosevelt hospital, New York city.
EXPERIMENTED ON ANIMALS.
When he was a practitioner here, Dr. Bennet was on the visiting staff of St. Margaret's hospital, Kansas city, Kas. The problem of prolonging life by applications to the heart interested him and he performed several minor experiments upon small animals, which convinced him that the correct method to induce normal heart action was to massage the upper portion of the thoracic cavity so as to induce contractions at the same rate at which the heart usually works. In order to test this idea he procured a hog after some difficulty, killed it, and then after heart action had ceased for several seconds, made an incision in the left breast, inserted his hand and massaged the heart rythmatically. After a few seconds the animal respired and showed other signs of life. Shortly after this Dr. Bennet announced his intention to specialize in the field of anesthetics and has since followed the fruitful field of inquiry which he opened up.
BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE.
Four years ago an experiment of the same kind was performed by leading Jackson county surgeons upon a dog in the clinic of the University Medical college. In this case it was four minutes after heart action had ceased that the incision was made and artificial action of the ventricles induced. The animal was brought back to life, but as soon as the pumping with the hand ceased the body became lifeless again.
Similar experiments have been performed at Johns Hopkins university in the last decade, but none of them antedate Dr. Bennet's experiment with the hog at St. Margaret's hospital. Although his experiment was not a complete success, his friends claim that he conceived the idea before any others.
The Medical Record declares that nine of the persons who were resuscitated in this manner in the New York hospitals recently are still living, and that seventeen of the forty-five operated upon after heart action had ceased were brought back temporarily, at least. In the New York experiments not only is artificial heart action brought about by inserting the hand into the breast and massaging the upper half of the organ, but artificial respiration is induced and the other parts of the body are moved by the surgeons at the same time.
To what extent these experiments may be carried, local physicians are unwilling to venture an opinion.
