A physician on the staff of the Slidell Memorial hospital has been credited with successfully delivering an infant by caesarean section about 10 minutes after the mother's death.
Dr. Richard Howard delivered the baby of Mrs. L. J. Dicker-son, 36, who had died of heart failure minutes before it arrived Thursday morning.
The woman's husband, a power saw operator, said he called the Slidell Memorial hospital after his wife, the mother of five, complained of feeling ill.
Dr. Howard answered the call, but had no surgical instruments.
"When I arrived and saw what had happened, I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and did the operation, " he said yesterday in Chattanooga, where he is vacationing.
He said Mrs. Dickerson was ] in her ninth month of pregnancy and the infant, a boy, was not breathing when he delivered it.
He gave the baby mouth to mouth resuscitation for 45 minutes and rushed it by ambulance to Slidell Memorial hospital for emergency treatment.
Dr. Marvin Kendrick, a pediatrician and an associate of Dr. Howard, treated the child at the hospital. He said the infant was released Saturday "in very good condition."
