13 AUGUST 1937, Page 6

It is a pity the American baby brought alive into

the world by a Caesarean operation after its mother's death should have died. Such cases are rare, though most of the papers have recalled the successful operation performed ten years or so ago in North London, when the mother was killed in a street accident. Some ten years before that again I was given by an eye-witness a graphic story of a Caesarean operation in a fever hospital. A woman was dying of scarlatina and the doctors resolved to do everything to save her child. As the end approached the surgeon stood by her bed scalpel in hand, and as she drew her last breath the operation was performed—successfully. The child survived, and showed no trace of the disease that had killed its mother.