How little can a full-grown man weigh and still live? Canadian doctors this week believed they had treated the sickest, lightest, most wasted man on record.
Bill Goddard, 32, sapper in the Royal Engineers, weighed only 57 Ibs. when found in a Formosa prison camp last September. When he arrived at Vancouver’s Military Hospital three months later he weighed in at 66. His skeletal body was racked with beriberi, pellagra, dysentery, malaria and pneumonia.
To pad his shrunken body, doctors gave him large amounts of vitamin B complex, beef essence, apple pulp, plasma. Sulfa drugs and penicillin helped clean out the small army of virulent germs. Now Thin-Man Goddard has pushed his weight up to 121 Ibs. (normal: 156), and can walk a little. In two or three months, perhaps, he may leave the hospital.
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