A Private Matter

"An operation of lumbar sympathectomy was performed on the King at 10 a.m. His Majesty's condition is entirely satisfactory."

This succinct palace bulletin informed anxious Britons that their 53-year-old monarch, George VI, had come through a fairly touchy operation to improve the bad leg which has cut down his public appearances ever since last November (TIME, Dec. 6).

Early last week six prominent physicians, with His Majesty's approval, announced their decision to operate. They prepared the Buckingham Palace room where the King's first grandson, Prince Charles, was born last fall. With eight other physicians and five nurses in attendance, grey-haired Professor J. R. Learmonth, Edinburgh neurosurgeon, who was on the staff of the Mayo Clinic 20 years ago, performed the delicate operation. It took less than an hour to remove, from the right side of the back, part of the sympathetic ganglia carrying nerves which cause leg arteries to constrict. If most of the King's impaired circulation is due (as his doctors think) to arterial spasm, the relaxation which follows sympathectomy should relieve the trouble and prevent gangrene.

Everything went so well that around noon Princess Elizabeth and Philip left for their usual country weekend. Asked whether the King would get his surgery free under the Labor government's socialized medicine plan (see FOREIGN NEWS), official spokesmen answered crisply, "That's a private matter between the King and his doctors."

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