Word: bernardi
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Your medical editor passed quite a "boner" in your marvelous tale from Brazil (TIME, Feb. 5) in which it is stated that "X rays proved that Spiritualist Bernardi's appendix had actually been removed [during a seance in a dark room]." Every medical man knows that the barium shadow of the appendix when in situ [in the body] is rarely seen. . . . The absence of such a shadow cannot possibly prove that the appendix is missing...
Strapped to an improvised operating table lay Andre di Bernardi, a spiritualist suffering from an inflamed appendix. While a phonograph played Gounod's Ave Maria, mediums "materialized" Dr. Luiz Gomes do Amaral, who died 19 years ago. The patient waited, fully conscious and quivering. He felt clammy hands on his body, a tingling scratch on his abdomen. A soft voice reassured him that he would feel no pain. Water splashed in a pail by his side as if an invisible surgeon were washing invisible hands...
...phonograph droned in the grisly darkness for an hour and 50 minutes. At last the lights went up. In a jar of alcohol weltered a fine appendix. On the patient's belly "was a neatly closed incision. Ten days later, X rays proved that Spiritualist Bernardi's appendix had actually been removed...