Cinematic Caesarean

A Vienna childbirth which an eminent surgeon last week feared might put him in jail began when the woman, her features twitching, yelped and fell into an eclamptic fit. Her whole body became rigid. She clenched her teeth, stopped breathing. Her face turned dusky red. For more than a minute she lay like that. Then, after a few minutes of spasmodic limb-yanking and body-jerking, she relaxed into a deathly coma.

In that state she was carried to the University of Vienna's gynecological clinic directed by Dr. Wilhelm Weibel. To his trained eye the woman was in a state of eclampsia. Her baby had become a deadly living tumor in her womb, was poisoning her to death. A caesarean section was plainly in order. Dr. Weibel had the woman placed on an operating table and prepared. His assistant, Dr. Ernst Preissecker, loaded a sterilized portable cinema camera to photograph Dr. Weibel at work for the benefit of medical students.

Dr. Weibel swiftly drew a vertical slash down the taut, iodine-painted belly. The flesh parted. The melon like womb protruded. Dr. Preissecker's camera whirred steadily. Dr. Weibel slashed open the womb, ran his hand under the child, lifted it out of its mother. The camera whirred, clicked, fluttered, stopped. Dr. Weibel looked at Dr. Preissecker. Dr. Preissecker fumbled with the camera. The film had broken. Dr. Preissecker tried to fix it, grew confused.

For two minutes Dr. Preissecker tinkered with the camera. Dr. Weibel could not help much. He was obliged to hold the baby who was still attached to the umbilical cord, which was still attached to the placenta, which was still attached to the womb of the unconscious woman on the operating table.

The baby took an untimely breath and mewled. Dr. Weibel, recollecting his proper business, hastily clamped and severed the umbilical cord, laid the baby aside until he could complete his caesarean work on the mother.

Dr. Weibel hoped that the baby would live, for newborn infants have tremendous vigor. This baby died two hours after delivery. Gossip soon ran through Vienna to the effect that it died because Dr. Weibel had paused for two minutes during the breakdown of the cinema camera. Bureaucrats in the Austrian Ministry of Education heard the talk. The State Secretary, Dr. Pernter, called Dr. Weibei to account. He explained that in eclampsia the child poisons the mother's blood and the mother's blood in turn poisons the child. In this case, said he, "autopsy next day showed conclusively that the child had died of toxemia received from the mother. There were so signs whatever of suffocation. Therefore the child did not die because of the interrupted operation."

That statement might have ended the matter, save for ulterior gossip because of which a special Governmental com-mission last week kept Dr. Weibel on tenterhooks. The rumor: Dr. Weibel is a Nazi, and therefore a menace to the Austrian Republic. The man who was supposed to be spreading such a tale: Dr. Weibel's assistant and camera-operator, Dr. Preissecker.

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