They Thought She Was Dead

The maid who arrived in mid-morning to clean the San Francisco apartment of Mrs. Theresa Butler, 60, thought that her employer was dead: she was lying in a half-filled bathtub and could not be roused. The doctor who came at the call of the apartment manager also thought that Mrs. Butler was dead. He could find no pulse, his stethoscope revealed no heartbeat. A mirror held before her mouth and nostrils showed no breathing. The eyes seemed lifeless, and Mrs. Butler's body was cold. Though the doctor estimated that she had been dead for hours, rigor mortis had not set in. The bath water, it was thought, might explain that.

Deputy Coroner James Leonard arrived. He, too, was sure that Mrs. Butler was dead. The doctor signed a death certificate and left. Then Leonard found empty sleeping pill bottles and notes indicating suicide. Leonard and the police spent a couple of hours making a routine search and filling out forms. At last they called the morgue. Mrs. Butler's body was strapped to a stretcher and carried in an upright position in the tiny elevator to the street.

At the morgue, the stretcher was being wheeled into the reception room when Leonard and Driver Jim Darling heard a gasp from under the sheets. Within eight minutes, Mrs. Butler was in an emergency hospital, wrapped in blankets. She was given plasma, and after 20 minutes she began to revive, with a pulse of 66. Within the hour, after more stimulants, her skin began to warm up. Mrs. Butler was really alive.

Even so, doctors did not think she could live long. But each day Mrs. Butler surprised them. She .gained strength, she did not get pneumonia as expected, and her temperature fell from 103 to 100. Still, the doctors felt sure that her brain must have been damaged by long hours of oxygen starvation. Mrs. Butler surprised them all again. When she regained consciousness she seemed fully coherent. By week's end she was taking solid food and was about ready to sit up.

The San Francisco health director's office promptly issued new rules: after this, an electrocardiogram and a test for oxygen in the blood should be made in cases like Mrs. Butler's.

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