Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1912-08-01
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STRANGE CIVIL WAR INCIDENT
Negro With Piece of Spent Ball In
Head Is Restored to Consciousness
by Surgical Operation.

After the battle Of Bull Run, when
the whole country was holding up its
hands in dismay and breathing hard
in the realization that the war was
not, after all, to be a picnic for the
northern troops, I, together with many
other doctors and surgeons, rushed
into Washington from distant cities.
writes G. Cutting Wilcox in the New
Orleans Times-Democrat
1 was taken, one dark, rainy night.
by an affable old negro woman to her
cabin, in the outskirts of the city.
She came to me in tears: Doc
tab. 1 des wisht yoh come an see my
Samson. He pears mons'o Gus curious.
an he acts des like he 'stracted-''
At her cabin I found her son, a ire
mendous fellow, as black as a coal
and evidently an athlete, with no evil
dence of a wound upon his body, but
with tendency to bear off to one side
as he walked, an apparent inability to
talk, and possessed of a persistent ef-
fort to march anti keep time to mar
tlal music, which he could not do.
/ Aunt Hannah told me that her son
had always been strong and healthy.
and that when he left Washington
with the army he was perfectly sound
and "des like de res of de folks: but
! dey fotch him back to his po' ole
nanny des like yoh sc him, doctah.
an I des skeered plumb outer my
senses, dat 1 is"
1 examined Samson carefully and
could find not the slightest thing the
matter with him, and half believed
that he was shamming.
The room was whitewashed and I
noticed a streak entirely around it
that was so evenly drawn that 1t at
tracted my attention, but in the stir
ring events of those days I really paid
scant heed to so trifing a case as
Samson's, and so apparently trivial an
| indication as was that level streak on
| the wall
His mother was still talking.
de reason dat all de table an
cheers Is in de floor, dOctah, is dat
| Samson he des runs inter all of EN-
! if dey close to de wall. Peers like he
des 'bleeged' skim along close up as
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his elbow scrapes along all day an
all night, 'cep when somebody's sitten',
holdin' his han er feelin his puIst.
! like yoh is now"
Young and inexperienced as I was,
even this did not give me clew, and
left, after giving some triding advice
and remedy.
I spent several years in Paris and
in Germany after the war, and it was
not until 1886 that 1 was back in
Washington.
We had an international convention
there at the time, and were taken to.
various public institutions, among
which was a little asylum for poor and
| insane negroes.
| In one room, as we were passing
the door, happened to observe on the
| whitewashed wall a well-worn streak
| drawn so level and circling the room
| so perfectly that it called to my mind
a vision which l had wholly forgotten.
Before noon the next day we had
| Samson's small room looking like a
hospital operating room, and the great
/ black frame lay on the table under the
/ influence of ether.
/ 1 cut open the right side of the
thick skull, and sure enough, a splin-
/ tered piece Of bone from an old de-
pressed fracture pressed into the
brain.
I lifted it, dressed it with aseptics.