Medicine: Heart Massage

Often enough to annoy a surgeon, the heart of a patient on the operating table stops. The alert surgeon gives the patient an injection of adrenalin, or tickles the heart with a needle, or stimulates it with an electrical pacemaker (TIME, Dec. 19, 1932). Or if he is working in the cavity of the chest or abdomen he may massage the heart back into action.

Last week Assistant Superintendent William Victor Machonachy of the University of Maryland’s University Hospital (oldest in Baltimore, founded 1823), told how a staff surgeon was working inside a woman’s abdomen when the anesthetist suddenly cried: “Doctor, I cannot feel her pulse.” The surgeon thrust his hand under the patient’s diaphragm, gently squeezed the heart against the chest wall, slowly relaxed it, squeezed again, relaxed. In a few seconds the heart was beating by itself, and the surgeon resumed the operation.