Whatever’s handy

When a British surgeon couldn’t find a scalpel, the BBC reported on Oct. 1, he reached for the next best thing: the Swiss Army knife. The news organization has not identified the surgeon, who was operating on a patient at the Royal Sussex Hospital in Brighton. While the surgery was reportedly an emergency — one the patient survived, thankfully — internal documents indicate that the surgeon’s colleagues found his behavior “questionable” and that they were “very surprised” he was unable to find a more conventional surgical tool.