Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 163, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1919 — Operates With Razor [ARTICLE]

Operates With Razor

American Red Cross Nurse Equal to Emergency. Performs Llfe-or-Death Amputation With Improvised Instrument* and Succeeds. Drama, Macedonia.—With a spool of cotton thread and a small portion of ether and chloroform Miss Maria P. Kouroyen, an American Red Gross nurse, performed a llfe-or-death operation here as the result of which and her other errands of mercy she has come to be known as “the American angel" by the homeless and starving Greek refugees. Born of Greek parents, Miss Kou royen is a gradpate nurse of the Massachusetts General hospital in Boston. Because of .her knowledge of Greek the American Red Cross sent her to

Macedonia, where typhus, smallpox -und cholera tread on each other*i "Keels, and where the refugees bury their dead beneath the dirt floors ol their shell-shattered shacks so that the bread cards of the dead member oi their family shall not be taken up. A Greek sqldier, one of whose legs had been crushed, was brought to ths box car on a railroad siding in which Miss Kouroyen was living. Something had to be done .for him gt once. Bor rowdng a razor, Miss Kouroyen anesthetized her patient with her small supply of ether, and performed an amputation, using cotton thread to “til off” the arteries and veins. Despite the prophecy of a local doc tpn that the aged patient would not live, through the night Miss Kouroyen some time later received a visit from her patient. He * had an American artificial limb made for him in th< American Red Cross artificial leg fa® tory for Greek war mutlles in 4thenf