Medicine: The Little Mouse

Little Denise McWhorter was only a few minutes old, but Pediatrician Spencer Snow could see that she was in desperate trouble. She had trouble breathing, and she could not swallow; she seemed to be drowning in her own saliva. In an effort to ease the difficulty, Snow slid a tube down the baby's throat. It stopped short, and X rays confirmed the diagnosis: little Denise has a connecting passage between her esophagus and her windpipe, and the upper section of the esophagus ended before it reached her stomach. Further examination showed that there was no opening at the lower end of...

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