Monday, Feb. 20, 1939
Medici Papae
Only a remarkably sturdy constitution could have withstood the series of painful breakdowns which sapped the strength of Pope Pius XI for almost three years. His early love for mountain climbing and his simple manner of living kept him in excellent health until he was well into his seventies. But for the last three years the sick man of Europe has kept devout Catholics, as well as reporters and radio commentators, awake many a night as he spectacularly battled death.
In 1936 he was attacked by arteriosclerosis with gangrene of the legs, and lay at the point of death. After his amazing recovery he had to give up his daily constitutional in the Vatican gardens, for leg pains, which often accompany hardening of the arteries, so crippled him that he was able to walk only a few steps at a time. He could not climb stairs, had to be carried from one audience chamber to another. Shrunken and pale, with hollow cheeks, he stuck to his job until last summer when he suffered a severe attack of the cardiac asthma which had troubled him two years before.
Cardiac asthma, which has no relation to true or bronchial asthma, sometimes occurs with arteriosclerosis, is characterized by a sudden rise in blood pressure, frantic gasping for breath, and frequent attacks of coughing. He was afflicted with myocarditis (inflammation of the muscular walls of the heart), and by this time his entire circulatory system was breaking down.
Even though he was too weak to take his daily drive, the Pope would have little to do with doctors, preferred to have his valet try "home remedies" to ease his pain. He ate only soft, bland foods: boiled chicken, thin vegetable soups, small amounts of rice pudding, occasional sips of red wine or champagne. Last November he had another serious attack of cardiac asthma, often had to get out of bed at night and sit in an armchair to relieve his coughing spells.
Last week he came down with influenza, suffered a third serious heart attack. Since his physician, Dr. Aminta Milani, was also sick with flu. Dr. Filippo Rocchi was called. Scarcely had he arrived when the Pope became unconscious. His pulse was feeble, his heartbeat almost inaudible. As a stimulant, Dr. Rocchi gave the Pope an injection of camphor oil* and half an hour later he regained consciousness.
His frail body, however, could stand no further onslaught, and when he complained of pain in his bladder, his physicians realized that his kidneys were weakened and knew that the end was near. Dr. Milani rose from his own sickbed, administered adrenalin. But it was no use. In a short time the Pope's heart gave way.
The 81-year-old Pontiff would have lived longer, said his physicians, had he not been confined to the Vatican until 1929 when the Lateran Treaty was signed. He remained within the Vatican grounds for seven hot, debilitating summers as a protest against Italian expropriation of papal property.
*U. S. physicians do not often use camphor oil as a stimulant, claim that it does little or no good.
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