Fatal Tonsillectomy

Osteopath Charles T. Markert of Ridgefield Park, N. J. was a good friend of Mr. Walter Freiwald, an accountant in nearby Bogota. So when Mr. Freiwald's 22-year-old son Walter Jr. came home from Plattsburg military training camp last July with infected tonsils. Osteopath Markert, himself only 25, offered to spare the family the expense of a hospital and surgeon. He invited his boyhood friend and schoolmate, Osteopath Thomas O. Maxfield, 27, of Maplewood, to come to his office and remove Walter's tonsils.

Under New Jersey law, Markert was not allowed to prescribe drugs, administer anesthetics, or use the knife in surgical operations. But Maxfield was a newly qualified "licensed medical practitioner"-- a kind of super-osteopath who had passed a special State examination allowing him "unlimited practice."

At 7:30 one morning last week, Walter, a junior in Rutgers University, went to Markert's office with his father. Mr. Freiwald waited while the two osteopaths placed Walter on an operating table. Markert, assuming that he was within the law by acting as Maxfield's assistant, gave the boy ether. Maxfield then began to snip out the right tonsil, he said.

Suddenly they noticed that young Freiwald's pulse was slowing down. Frantically the two men applied artificial respiration, but to no avail. At 10:04 they called the police for oxygen tanks and a Pulmotor. In six minutes the police arrived. For two hours they worked over the boy, until the county physician pronounced him dead. The osteopaths insisted on continuing resuscitation until finally, a little after 3 o'clock, they gave up. Walter Freiwald had died from too much ether in his lungs and brain.

Markert was promptly arrested, charged with manslaughter, held on $990 bail. Maxfield was photographed, fingerprinted and released. He had not transgressed the law. Said Walter's bereaved mother to reporters: "We had all the confidence in the world in him."

Osteopaths are allowed unlimited practice in 16 States, are allowed to perform major surgery in 34 States, eleven of which require special examinations or internships.

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