Morning journal and courier., 1881-10-13
A Brain Pierced by Wires.

Man Living for Years with a Strange l Intury-A COnvict's Queer Actions. Lyme (Conn.l Correspondence of the N. Y. Times
 In the Times I noticed an article entitled 1 "Losing Part of His Brain" under date of Sept. 22. The case was that of man wound ed in the head. He was struck with knife 1 on the top of the head. The blade of the
 knife penetrated the skull to the depth of ! one and three eighths inches, and the man | lived. Up to date he was under the surgeons care, doing well.
 1 strange case of injury to the brain oc- cured in Kansas in 1875. I became acquaint- | with the facts in September of that year. and ! they are easily authenticated as the subject 1 of them was an inmate of the State peniten- I tiary'a at Leavenworth, who had just compile ! ted seven years term for burglary He I was Scandinavian, had been in this country 1 only short time when he went to Kansas l and took up temporary home in Lawrence
 I give the facts of this case as nearly as | can remember them. I may not be entirely accurate in all the details, but I an, certain of the general tenor of them One Sunday evening he was walking through the streets of the city, and was out of tobacco. After dark he broke into tobacco store and stole some, for which act of burglary he was sentenced to seven years imprisonment in the penitentiary. The officers of the prison soon came to trust him, and before long he went in and out of the gates on special du- ties as trusted messenger ever convict was After serving five years of his term he began to act queerly at times. He was not sick, but did queer things. As the sixth year of his term wore on these strange ac-
 tions occurred more frequently. He was
 treated in the hospital for debility or ner-
 vousness. One day the surgeon came to his
 bed and asked, ''How are you to-day ?''
 "Oh, Doctor, my head pains me so," he said,
 and added, Eff you could run knife into
 my. brain am sure it would help me-" The
 surgeon was passing his hand over the mans
 head to soothe him when he felt hard point
 on the skull. He continued to smooth the
 hair, with particular reference to determine
 what this hard point was. He became con
 vinced it was a wire sticking in the skull
 The result was he pulled out the wire with a
 pair of nippers, and my impression is 1t was
 three inches long At all events, it penetra-
 ted the brain some distance. I will not in-
 sist upon the three inches for I have stran-
 ger things still to relate. After this opera
 ton the patient recovered strength, went
 about his work as usual, and attracted no
 special notice except that his queer ways and
 manner increased. About this time the gov
 ernment began to build wing to the peni-
 tentiary When the building was inclosed this man was seen one day to enter it. He picked up carpenters awl, and before they could stop him, before they anticipated his action, he placed the awl, point downward
 on the top of his head and bumped the han dle of the aw1 against the beams overhead he was standing on a scaffold at the time so that his head reached to the beams-and drove the iron point down through his skull. He was immediately taken to the hospital, the awl was withdrawn, and after time he was discharged and went about his duties as before.
 His good conduct during the years of his imprisonment had entitled him, under the prison rules, to reduction of time so that when he had served six years and some months he was discharged from the peniten- tiary for expiration of term. The officers obtained work for him with a carpenter out side, but the man so lonely that he often came to the prison to sleep at night. One day, after only few weeks of liberty, word was brought to the prison that this man had poisoned himself in the house where he boarded. The surgeon went at once to the place and applied the stomach-pump and re- storatives, but without avail. They brought him to the prison hospital, and it was while he was lying on cot there, breathing heav- fly and frothing at the mouth, that first saw him. He died during the day. The next morning the surgeon, with other physicians outside if I mistake not, held post mortem examination and found two wires in his head. One of these wires extended from ear to ear, running directly through the head the other ran down from the top of the head several inches into the brain. And these wires had been in the head so long time that the scalp had closed over the1r ends can not say how the man acted, except that itsswas ''queer." He was melancholy and depressed. The officers thought it was be- cause of the disgrace of imprisonment for burglary until they were made acquainted with the facts of the autopsy. How long he walked about with these wires piercing his brain cannot tell. Nobody knew. It was long enough for the scalp to close over their ends. But the injury to the brain did not kill him. He took morphine, something like an ounce of it, and died from its effects. The next day requested to bury him and read the service over his grave, after which three of his late comrades in striped uniform shoveled in the clods of the valley upon his coffin. The facts in this case were given to me by the warden and other officers of the penitentiary. It was said by the sur geon to be the strangest case of the kind on record AS I read the case of this Pottsville man who carried part of knife-blade in bis brain for days recalled the facts of the strange case have narrated. w. 5. C.