With Fire & Sword

At 17 Andrew Baczek was an apprentice sword swallower (for a change of diet he sometimes ate fire, too) with a few months' experience. One day, at Chicago's Riverview Amusement Park, he overate. "I'd already swallowed that bayonet five times that day," he recalled later. "You're only supposed to do it a few times a week." At any rate, when he tried to swallow that bayonet, almost a foot of it slipped down all right and then it stuck. The crowd began to titter and Andy panicked. Instead of pulling the bayonet out and starting again, he tried to force it. Though it hurt a bit, he got through the act.

At home Andy began to feel ill, took a cola drink and milk to ease the pain. They only made it worse. He called his family physician, who knew Andy's occupation. A barium X ray confirmed his diagnosis: Andy had punched a hole through his esophagus (gullet), narrowly missed his heart. His drinks were spilling through the hole into his chest cavity. The doctor called Surgeon Philip Thorek, an amateur movie fan who is careful to take a camera crew with him on unusual cases.

Last week Dr. Thorek told the International College of Surgeons meeting in Los Angeles how he had routed out his cameramen at 1 a.m. when he got the call to operate on Andy. The resulting films showed the X ray and progress of the operation. Under general anesthesia he cut out Andy's fifth rib, pumped out the milk and cola, worked around the heart to get at the esophagus. Then he sewed up the hole. Andy's recovery was complicated by infection in the chest cavity, but antibiotics took care of that.

For a while he tried fire-eating again, but somehow lost his taste for that, too. Now a sober 22, Andy has sworn off both fire and steel for life, has a humdrum job as a packer in a pastry-mix factory.

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