Dr. Alexander Brunschwig of Manhattan's Memorial Hospital has literally disemboweled hundreds of patients during the past 17 years. In almost every case, the list of organs he has removed would seem to be a surely lethal loss. But Brunschwig's viscerations or pelvic exenterations, as surgeons prefer to call the incredibly drastic operations have been a startlingly successful effort to save lives after all hope was gone.
In a newly published French monograph, L'Exentération pelvienne, Dr. Brunschwig reports that no fewer than 116 of his 562 patients have lived five years or...