The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-07-24
HAS A BULLET IN HIS BRAIN.
A Man Who Lives and Laughs with
 Brain Cells Shattered.

A Man Wn0 Lives ana Laughs "AIli
 Brain Cells Shattered.
 To be alive with a thirty-two calibre bullet, weighing one fifth of an ounce, imbedded in his brain is the strange case of Charles Martinek, which is be- studied by physicians at the City Hos pital.
 Martinek attempted suicide on March IA by sooting himself in the right temple. The bullet entered his brain and is now lodged against the back of the skull, Title lower than | its point of entrance.
 Martinek has apparently suffered no inconvenience, although the brain area through which the bullet passed has been greatly injured, and part of the brain,a which protruded through the opening made by the bullet, has been removed. ..st.. In it's passage the bullet cut through the nerve centres controlling the ton gue and muscles of the throat. It also passed through those controlling the larynx, where the organs of speech are located and it's entrance evidently shattered that part of the brain which gives the ability to read and under stand printed or written characters,
 By every rule in the works on ana tony, according to the doctors, Mar tinek should now be dead, or at least an imbecile He should be living on a cot unable to feed himself or to swal- low even liquid substances. To chew solid food ough to be impossible for him. The power of speech also should be lacking owing to the paralysis of the larynx, where the vocal cords are located.
 But none of these dreadful things ! has happened.
 Martinek walks about the surgical ward as we'll as he ever was. except for the wound in his skull, which has not i yet healed. He suffers no pain except when the wound is dressed every third 1 day. ..
 He is one of the liveliest and most talkative patients in the institution. He can speak five uages-German, Polish, Bohemian, Hungarian and Lithusanian. He has even begun to learn English from one of the other l convalescent patients, and will quit the hospital in few days with more knowledge than when he entered with the bullet wound In his head. | When the physicians first examined hilm and found that such an enormous area of brain substance had been pass 1 ed through by the bullet Martinek's S death was freely prophesied. E ] As he was not ucounscious an X- ray photograph was made and the bullet was found lying against the back of. the skull. The path of the mis- sile was traced on a chart and a re- port of the case made ready for the coroner.
 l Chart and record will now be used to illustrate scientific report of this ex- l traordinary case.
 While Martinek's case is one of'the rarest of recent years, 1t is not alto- gether unprecedented. Fifty years have passed since the first case of an in- jury to the brain was recoted in medi- cal annals. Previous to that time, any injury that caused lession of brain substance had been followed by death The all precedents were cast by the case of a mine worker. A premature l blast shot a crowbar with which he was tamping a drill hole through his head. Half of his brains were destroy l ed and he was taken to an undertaking establishment to be prepared for bur- 1 ial.
 There he revived and lived to be an old man. He never had to work after the accident but made a living by ex- hibiting himself before, learned - and medical societies. l. ! 7. SEF ; -'|i
 The came a reVulsion and surgeons everywhere were eager to operate on the brain. It was no longer the unap- proachable, and operations are on re- cord where gangila controlling the nerves of the face have been removed to relieve the terrible neuralgia that often, drives it's victims to suicide.
 Many of these operations not only paralyzed the facial muscles, but also caused idiocy, and except in aggravat- ed cases, where the, patients mind is affected by the strain of suffering, the operation is not cotntenanced.
 Martinek's case is considered fully wonderful as that of the man whose brain was pierced by the crowbar.-St Louis Post-Dispatch.
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