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Autopsy Puts Boy in Class of Defectives

The Bollinger baby is dead. Nature, left to itself, righted its mistake at the German-American hospital shortly after 10 o'clock last night.

Science withheld the scalpel that might have given life to the cripple, even while a woman hovered near the bedside hoping for a chance to kidnap the baby and have some surgeon perform an operation.

In the meantime the world wagged its tongue over two questions:

Is Dr. Harry J. Haiselden guilty of criminal neglect?

Has a doctor the right to withhold the divine gift of life from any human being, no matter how malformed?

At midnight a secret autopsy was performed at the hospital by Dr. H. G. W. Reinhardt, chief coroner's physician. His prompt action was taken because Coroner Hoffman had indicated that unless a post-mortem proved the child, if its life had been saved by an operation, would have been a mental defective, Dr. Haisleden, chief of the hospital staff, might be tried for criminal negligence for his refusal to intervene, even though with the parents' consent.

"I cannot say positively that the child would have been a mental defective," said Dr. Reinhardt after the examination, "but my examination shows that the probabilities are strongly in this direction.

"My own opinion is that Dr. Haiselden was right in not allowing the baby to live. I shall report this to the coroner in the morning with the technical results of my examination.

"One thing is certain. The baby, if it had lived, would have been a paralytic and a cripple all its life.

"It had no right ear and the skip of its right shoulder was attached directly to the right side of the head. The head was abnormally large and set close to the shoulders. Apparently there was no neck. There was a marked curvature of the spine in the dorsal region.

"The really fatal thing, however, was that the descending colon had a blind end. There was a slight hemorrhage in the left half of the brain, which cased paralysis of the right side."

Dr. Patrick Machler assisted Dr. Reinhardt.

Before it died the baby flung a grim taunt in the face of the world that didn't want it. Dr. Haiselden had been told at 7:30 that the baby was dead. Worked out by the strain of the bitter things said by callers at the hospital, the physician left final directions for the care of the body and departed saying that he was going to "lose himself for a few hours."

The coroner's office was notified and Dr. Reinhardt hurried to the hospital. Instruments and an operating table were prepared and the child was brought in, wrapped in a blanket, by a white faced nurse.

When the wrappings were removed the child's arm quivered, one of its arms moved, and it emitted a low gurgle. Dr. Reinhardt stepped back.

"You don't want me," he exclaimed.

"I am a physician of the dead. You want a different kind of a doctor."

Dr. Reinhardt left the hospital and, unnerved by the mistake. Dr. R. L. Feser of the hospital staff and Miss Beulah Freed, head nurse, took the child into a room adjoining the office. Then, fearing a repetition of the attempt to kidnap the baby they prepared another room on an upper floor.

When they went back to the first floor for the child, it had breathed its last.

Then there was more telephoning, efforts to locate Dr. Haiselden, and another summons to Dr. Reinhardt.

Mrs. Anna Bollinger of 2013 Fletcher street, the mother of the child, was in another room at the hospital. She had never seen her baby, though she had consented to Dr. Haiselden's suggestion that it be allowed to die, and had been told that relatives had christened it Allan Bollinger.

And she was not told that her baby was dead.

"She is weak and has a high temperature," said one of the nurses. "It would not do to tell her tonight."

Miss Catherine J. V. Walsh, a member of the Catholic church of St. Ann de Brighton, was the cause of placing a special guard of nurses about the child early in the afternoon.

She called at the hospital and demanded she be permitted to baptize the infant. Not knowing possibly that it had already been christened by relatives, the hospital authorities granted her the desired permission.

After the baptism had been performed Mrs. Walsh persisted in staying at the child's side. After she had been there three hours Dr. Haiselden became nervous and questioned her.

"Yes," she admitted, defiantly. "I have just been waiting for a chance to take him away. I was hoping I would have a chance to kidnap him. You inhuman surgeon, you are not fit to have the care of any child. You admit an operation might have saved his life. Well, I want to take him to a friend of mine who is a physician and has a heart in his body."

After he had answered more than 200 telephone calls from Chicagoans who approved his course or attacked it bitterly, Dr. Haiselden was told that Dr. John Dill Robertson, commissioner of health, was at the hospital and wanted to see him.