Mishaps in Massachusetts

In Massachusetts last week occurred two strange mishaps of the sort which require all the fortitude and ingenuity of a doctor.

At a Lowell power plant one freezing midnight, the cab of a traveling crane operated by one John McCoy, 47, fell, landed on a steel girder 50 feet above the ground. John McCoy, finding his right arm vised between the girder and the roof of his cab, let out a yell that brought firemen, a priest and a doctor.

Dr. Norman Gillmor Long, 32, climbed to the cab on the girder, clung precariously to a ladder. Asked John McCoy: "Is my arm gone, Doc?" Dr. Long: "We'll see. Just take it easy." The doctor gave the crane operator a swig of whiskey, dulled him further with a hypodermic of morphine. Then operating with only his left hand through a hole cut in the side of the cab and working with his surgeon's lancet and a machinist's hacksaw, Dr. Long amputated John McCoy's right arm at the shoulder. Thereupon firemen hauled the man out of the cab, tied a rope around his waist, lowered him head first to an ambulance which rushed him to a hospital for possible recovery.

At Woburn's Charles Choate Memorial Hospital day after the Lowell mishap, Dr. Thomas Francis Halpin, 31, with three nurses assisting, was in process of delivering a baby by means of forceps. He became aware of a severe headache, a sharp pain in his chest. He turned to one nurse, saw her drop unconscious to the floor. Just then a second nurse also dropped unconscious. The third nurse reeled to the double doors of the tightly closed obstetrical room, pushed them open, released a flood of carbon monoxide gas developed by a defective, gas-heated sterilizer. Refreshed, Dr. Halpin completed the delivery of a healthy boy.

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