The Big Meal

At 19, Sharry Rubin was an up-and-coming TV actress (such shows as Playhouse go and Armstrong Circle Theater), and keeping her 5-ft.-5-in. frame down to a model-shapely 100 lbs. Daughter of a New York City leather-goods manufacturer, Sharry had emotional problems that sent her to a psychiatrist and may have helped her vivid portrayal of a disturbed teen-ager in The Case for Room 310. One morning last month, at her family's home in Hewlett Harbor, L.I., Sharry Rubin sought emotional satisfaction, probably for an unconscious need, by gorging herself. She put away the equivalent of three full meals, including a lot of meat. In midafternoon she was admitted to Meadowbrook Hospital with crippling abdominal pain; early in the evening, when doctors were about to operate, she died.

Last week Nassau County's Medical Examiner Leslie Lukash told why. Sharry Rubin's bloated stomach had refused--possibly because of her emotional tension --to empty through its lower outlet. The excess food digesting in the stomach drew in fluid and built up a powerful back pressure. As Sharry made violent but vain efforts to release this pressure by vomiting, it burst the upper part of the stomach. The contents (more than 4 qts.) began to spill into the abdominal cavity, caused peritonitis.

Spontaneous stomach rupture sometimes follows overdosing with sodium bicarbonate, but is uncommon from any cause. A case like Sharry Rubin's is rare indeed.

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