The Portland daily press., 1897-12-28
is THERE NO VITAL sPoTq
Wounds of Heart and Brain That ~
Failed to Kill.
(From the Chicago Daily Tribune

| (From the Chicago Daily Tribune. \
t'For my own part said the doctor
with a shrug, 81 would prefer not TO he
shot at all, whether in the heart, head
lungs, liver or brain, and yet 1 have ia.
ken note of many cases recently in which
persons have sustained gunshot wopnde
of supposedly fatal character, who are
still alive and going about their bust.
ness''
The doctor and his companion were
passing a downtown museum when the
conversation took this turn. Among the
freaks pictured and caricatured in front
of the building was a man with ragged
bullet wound torn through his heart
| which organ was wildly exposed in the
tiaring daub-whiIe the angel of death
was lowering over him, ready to snatch
him away at any moment. The appeal
to morbid amusement seekers was such
as to lead to the inference that the un
fortunate with the wound in his heart
might obligingly drop dead at any min
ute, for the special deleetation of those
who paid their dimes and walked in to
see him.
"Then,' said the Doctors friend, "a
shot or stab in the heart is not neces-
sarily fatal, as it is understood by mod
ern surgery?'
mot at all,'' returned the doctor.
"But, of course, we are not speaking of
wounds as big and terrible as the one in
that museum picture; that is apparently
even worse than the thrust received by
Mercutio-looks about as deep as we'll
and as wide as church door. No man
who has been wounded like that ever sur.
wives more than minute.
"That man in the museum is alleged to
be Charles B. Nelson, who was mysteri-
ously shot one evening last summer while
in the company OF. Mrs. Edith Margue-
rite Staples in Washington Park. The
shooting occurred on the night of July /, ,
five months ago, and the man with an
once of lead in his heart is still alive.
Whether he sleeps we'll and has a good
appetite | am unable to say. He was
formerly cyclist of some note. Nelson S
breast was subjected to the X-rays, and
according to soiographs which were made
at the time, the bullet lodged in the sep
tum of the heart-the fourfold partition
of muscular ibre that divides the interi-
or of that organ into right and left auri-
Giles and ventricles. There it has contin-
ued to throb up and down about 100, 600
times day ever since that mysterious
shooting, and at every pulsation refuting
the old theory of medical science that
the touch of hostile metal to mans heart
brings death.
"The most skillful and daring surgeon
on earth, if he were asked to remove the
bullet from Nelson's heart, would shake
his head in the negative. So this man
must carry his leaden handicap as long
as life shall last. Seems strange, doesn' t
it? In the sciograph views which were
made of Nelson's wound the shadow of
the bullet appears almost exactly in the
centre of the thorax, midway between the
ends of the fourth pair of ribs. In the
profile view of the thorax the location of
the black spot shows that the bullet pen
etrated two and a half inches of cartilage
and muscle before it was stopped. At
the point where it entered the thor9x the
pericardium, which incloses the heart.
touches the sternum, itself less than an
inch in thickness; so that the surgeons
claim the other inch and a half of the
bullet s path was ploughed through the
fbres of the heart. The exact injury in
fiicted upon the heart, however, is still an
open question, which will only be deter
mined satisfactorily to science by an au-
topsy. 1t has been argued by some that
the bullet was a spent ball, which pierced
the pericardium and dropped, in which
case the muscular tissues of the heart
were not lacerated or wounded.
And yet, Notwithstanding what I
have said, we have surgeons nowadays
who do undertake and carry to a success
full conclusion operations on the heart.
This is done by opening the poricardium,
for example, in cases of dropsy of the
heart, and drawing off the fluid by aspi-
ration. man may have his heart pune
tured with tie point of knife or needle
and still recover from the injury It
used to be held that wounds of this char
acter were invariably fatal. But a wound
Of the heart is not necessarily fatal, as is
shown in the case where needle was re-
moved by Calender from the substance
of that organ. Cases of like nature
have been reported by Drs. Hahn, Agnew,
Steiner and others. More than fifty
cases where rupture of the heart walls
reported by DR.. d. J. Hamilton, we'll
known Scotch surgeon and pathologist
''The case of Poole, prize fighter, was
one of the most remarkable. Poole was
shot in the heart while engaged in an en-
counter with man named Baker, in
New Jersey, in 1855. To all outward ap-
pearance he recovered rapidly, and in
four days felt so we'll that he expressed a
wish to finish the interrupted contest.
Twelve days later, however, he suddenly
dropped to thu ground. Within five min
utes he was dead.
"More remarkable still, perhaps, are
the numerous injuries to the brain and
spinal cord, which on first view would be
pronounced fatal, and yet from which the
wounded persons recover. At Valparaiso,
Ind, a few days ago, a man named Her
bert j. Fish, while in fit of temporary
insanity, put 38-calibre bullet through
his brain, and at last accounts he was
still alive and apparently getting we'll
The bullet, by all accounts, passed
through the right and left anterior hem
isphere of the brain, lodging finally in
the poster or bone wall of the left eye SO
oket. In it's course the ball destroyed a
large amount of brain matter. At the