Medicine: Capsules, Jan. 7, 1952

¶ Of scores of babies in medical records who have been born with the heart outside the body, only five had ever been operated on, and none had ever lived more than twelve hours. So Deborah Kay Angelo of Tacoma, Wash, was making medical history: the sixth such baby to undergo surgery, Deborah Kay had lived a month, seemed to be doing fine. Last week she developed a fever and refused food; within hours, her heart stopped beating.

¶ When an older person has a heart attack, anxious friends often tell themselves, "It's bad for anybody his age." But it's not necessarily so, say five heart specialists in the A.M.A. Journal: severity and frequency are what count. Age as such has little or nothing to do with it. ¶ Mrs. Therese K. Butler, 60, who was brought "back from the dead" at a San Francisco city hospital after an attempt at suicide (TIME, Nov. 26), asked $533.70 damages last week for burns she claims she suffered during treatment to restore her circulation. City Health Director Jacob C. Geiger, hopping mad, promised to send Mrs. Butler a bill for the "extraordinary" care she had received, which included round-the-clock nursing and blood transfusions. Said Geiger: "It's an extraordinary thing to be sued for saving a life."