NEW YORK, March 4, 1953 (UP) -- Josef Stalin is on his deathbed, two American physicians concluded today from studying the medical bulletin of his eight attending physicians. Even 80 physicians could not save him, they said. Although the Russians spoke of "a series of therapeutic measures," the Americans said, there was little that could be done by medicine.
What happened to Marshal Stalin is classified medically as an "accident." A blood vessel feeding his brain burst under the pressure of the blood flowing through it.
The bulletin, under expert reading, showed Marshal Stalin's accident was little if at all short of catastrophic from the viewpoint of survival. The American doctors thought the vessels which broke probably was one of the immediate branches of the middle cerebral artery.
Furthermore, they said, the bulletin indicated it was a very large break which flooded the brain tissues with blood and, probably, sent blood into the brain cavities.
Victims of such a large-scale accident usually are dead within two days but may hang on for two weeks. But two signs of approaching death from cerebral hemorrhage were clearly described, the doctors agreed.
One was the between-the-lines indication that Marshal Stalin had been in a deep coma for around 40 hours. This would indicate that the body's capacity to repair accidents had been overwhelmed.
The other sign was his "Cheyne - Stokes" breathing. This is a snore-like breathing broken by intervals in which there is no breathing. It comes from a disruption of the body's ability to breathe in and absorb oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. It was described first by Dr. John Cheyne, a Scot who practiced in Ireland, in 1818. It's an exceedingly bad sign.
Paralysis of one leg and one arm, on the same side, results from comparatively mild brain hemorrhages. Indeed, this often is the first announcement of there having been an accident. Suddenly the victim falls because one leg is paralyzed.
But the mild cases usually recover- after months. The tissue killed by the flood of blood-and the blood, too- are replaced by new connective tissue and new blood paths are formed. Slowly paralysis lessens although most victims have a permanent impairment of gait and speech.
However, Marshal Stalin's accident obviously was not mild.
