The Obsessed

TRIALS The Obsessed The minute details of dying filled the notebooks of the court stenographers. In Manchester, N.H., in the county court, there was no argument over whether "mercy" killing was or was not justified; the moral issue of euthanasia had been taken out of the case. The argument last week was whether life had not already left the wasted body of 59-year-old Abbie Borroto when Dr. Hermann Sander injected air into her veins. The defense argued that life had previously fled, that Sander therefore could not be charged with her death. The prosecution contended that her pathetic body, which had now become a piece of impersonal evidence in a public medical argument, still contained life when Dr. Sander called for the syringe.

On the witness stand, Mrs. Borroto's private nurse, Elizabeth Rose, repudiated an earlier statement that she was certain Abbie Borroto was already dead (TIME, March 6). There had been short gasps from the body on the bed, "a louder gasp" when Dr. Sander inserted the needle, she said. Other hospital attendants attested to "muscular twitchings"; two doctors declared that an air embolism could have been lethal; other witnesses testified that Dr. Sander had indicated by his remarks that he himself thought he had ended a dwindling life.

The Selfless. Dr. Albert Snay took the stand for the defense. He had examined Abbie Borroto just before his friend Dr. Sander came into the room. He had found no pulse, no corneal reflex when he touched the eye, the skin was cold, he had heard no heartbeat. He met Dr. Sander in the doorway, he said, and told him that the patient was gone.

A stream of witnesses took the stand to testify, some with trembling voices, to the selflessness of Hermann Sander--who had made up his mind to become a physician after reading Lloyd C. Douglas' Magnificent Obsession, who refused to send bills to people who could not afford to pay them, who sometimes slept, exhausted, on the floor of his office, who in the last few months before Mrs. Borroto's death had become overwrought, mentally and physically fatigued.

"Something Snapped." This week Dr. Sander took the stand and in a calm voice told his story. "I never had any intention of killing Mrs. Borroto," he said. He too, he testified, had thought she was dead when he entered her room. "I can't explain exactly what action I took then. Something snapped. Why I did it I can't tell. It doesn't make sense."

Why had he dictated for the records that she died 10 minutes after the injection? "It doesn't really represent the facts. I probably wasn't even fair to myself."

State's Attorney General William Phinney continued to press him on the question of why he had injected the air. "I don't know," Dr. Sander insisted. "It was just the appearance of her face and the remembrance of her long suffering that might have touched me off."

Why, after injecting 10 ccs of air did he open the syringe and insert more air? "I don't know ... I was obsessed," the doctor said. Phinney persisted: "You had an obsession to inject air into the veins of this poor, dead soul?" Said Dr. Sander:. "That's right . . . The very fact that she was dead gave me assurance that I could do her no harm."

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