Hiccup Girl

Anna Mayer, 21, of New York City started hiccuping some seven weeks ago, but unlike most people, she did not stop. Anna Mayer knew she was in for it -in 1941 she hiccuped for 42 days. That siege, during which her weight dropped from no to 68 lb., ended dramatically in a nerve operation by Dr. Lester Samuels.

Last week, again after 42 days of hiccuping, Miss Mayer was getting weak because hiccups occurred so often that eating was almost impossible. This time she had not had an operation. Dr. Samuels, now a captain, was off somewhere with the Army, and she refused to be operated on by anybody else.

Her family, worried because they knew that a girl died of hiccups in 1929, asked Mrs. Roosevelt to find Captain Samuels. The War Department sent his address.

The Mayers promptly sent the Captain $200, asked him to get leave, come East and fix Anna. They also sent the number of a local telephone booth where the doctor could get in touch with them (the Mayers have no phone).

But Captain Samuels could not get leave. So the family appealed to President Roosevelt who got the Surgeon General to let the Captain off. But by then Captain Samuels could not be found he had left the post for an "unknown destination."

At this juncture, Miss Mayer went and, hiccuping quietly to herself, sat in the phone booth at the corner drugstore -she thought Dr. Samuels might be in New York City trying to get in touch with her. While she waited, she -read suggestions that would-be-helpful people had written to her: try catchup in beer, try holding your ears, try wishing on an inverted teacup. Said Miss Mayer: "Such superstition."

In the end, when the girl had hiccuped

46 days and gone down to 81 pounds,

Captain Samuels turned up. He ended the hiccups just as he had before -by making an incision in Miss Mayer's chest and crushing the phrenic nerve which controls the diaphragm where all hiccups originate.

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