I have never heard of this, and now wonder if this was a relative. It is a family name for at least 5 generations.
Ok. The story about Terry Shaivo was wrong on so many counts. Are we supposed to believe anything else in the story??
If John Bollinger was born with “a closed intestine” in 1915 (imperforate anus?) the odds of him surviving an operation to make the connection without antibiotics were fairly low. The surgeon would have had to go in without imaging; the risk of infection would be high, and feeding the child would have strained the repair, and likely led to contamination of the abdominal cavity.
I remember reading about a 17th c. midwife having delivered such a child, and she probed with a knife (in case there was merely a skin over the opening.) . That baby didn’t make it either.