Beads to Steak

When she was two years old, Mrs. Agnes Gregory of Kansas City swallowed some lye, seared the delicate lining of her throat and gullet. The painful burns healed, but new scar tissue gradually filled in the passage to her stomach. After about 25 years, her gullet was so constricted that Mrs. Gregory could swallow only liquids. After 30 years she could swallow nothing at all.

Last fortnight, on a hunch, an unnamed physician at General Hospital tried a simple kindergarten game on Mrs. Gregory. He knotted the end of a fine steel wire, gently pushed it down her throat into her stomach. On the wire he threaded a tiny steel bead, no larger than a grain of wheat, which he propelled down Mrs. Gregory's throat with a small steel spring. The next bead was a little larger. After half a dozen graduated beads had gone down the wire, and forced a narrow opening in Mrs. Gregory's food passage, the doctor pulled them all up. For ten days he repeated the process, using larger beads each time, until finally Mrs. Gregory could gulp down a bead the size of a hickory nut.

Last week the doctor proudly pulled up all the beads, and gave Mrs. Gregory a juicy steak with no wires attached. "I can swallow better now than I have ever been able to,"; cried joyful Agnes Gregory as she chewed on the first steak she ever ate. With periodical bead-treatments and swallows of solid food, the lining of Mrs.Gregory's gullet should stay where it belongs.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.