Excision; Explosion; Examination

CONSERVATION

Excision; Explosion; Examination

In Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park fortnight ago Navajo Indians were giving a tribal fire dance. One interested spectator was a very tall, very thin man with bright deep-sunken eyes. Beside him stood the manager of a bus company. Suddenly the bus manager clapped his hand to his right side, groaned in agony, collapsed. The tall thin man had him removed to an emergency hospital nearby, tapped his abdomen, announced crisply: "Appendix. We'll have to operate at once. Not a moment to lose!"

The bus manager was made ready on the operating table while the tall thin man whipped off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, put on a surgeon's white robe. A quick deft incision and a few minutes later the tall thin man had excised the bus manager's ruptured appendix. Such was the first operation performed by tall, thin Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, brother of the Constitution sponsor (see p.11), since he became President Hoover's Secretary of the Interior.

Rather proud of himself, Secretary Wilbur proceeded to Las Vegas, N. M. where he joined Carl Raymond Gray, Union Pacific System's president and then on to Hoover Dam. There he exploded the first charge of dynamite in Black Canyon's wall for the 4,000 ft. diversion tunnels which will carry the Colorado River around the dam site during construction.

The heat in the canyon was intense. It had already killed one workman. Secretary Wilbur, the sweat running into his eyes, felt dizzy. Last week his department ordered physical examination for all Hoover Dam workers to determine if they were fit to stand the blazing canyon temperature (100DEG plus) at dam site. Much of the labor has been recruited from nearby camps of unemployed men whose physical condition has been lowered by scant rations.

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