The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1912-07-25
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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 picnic for the
northern troops. /. together with many
pther doctors and surgeons. rushed
into Washington from distant cities.
writes G. Cutting Wilcox in the New
Orleans Times-Democrat.
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, | des wisht yoh come an see my
Samson. He pears mons'ous curious,
an he acts des like he stracted."
At her cabin found her son. ire
mendous fellow, as black as a coal
and evidently an athlete, with no evil
dence of 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 and keep time to mar
tial music, which he could not do.
Aunt Hannah told me that her son
had always been strong and healthy,
and thai when he left Washington
| with the army he was perfectly sound
and dos like de res of de folks; but
dey fotch him back to his po ole
nanny des like yoh Sc him, doctah
an des skeered plumb outer my
senses, dat l is"
| 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
noticed a streak entirely around II
that was so evenly drawn that 1t at
tracted my attention. but In the stir
| ring events of those days | really paid
scant heed to so trifling a case as
Samson's, and so apparently trivial an
| indication as was that level streak OF
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 al
| eber he kin. Dat dar streak Is whal
his elbow scrapes along all day an
all night. 'cep when somebody's sitten'
holdin' his han err feelin' his pulst
like yoh Is now"
Young and inexperienced as l was
even this did not give me clew, an(
| left, after giving some trifling advice
and remedy.
| | spent several years In Paris ant
in Germany after the war, and 1t was
not until 1886 that l was back II
Washington.
We had an international convention
there at the time. and were taken tt
various public institutions, amont
which was little asylum for poor ant
insane negroes.
In one room, as we were passint
the door. happened to observe on thu
whitewashed wall well-worn streal
drawn SO level and circling the room
SO perfectly that it called to my mint
vision which had wholly forgotten
Before noon the next day we hat
Samson's small room looking like
hospital operating room, and the grea
black frame lay on the table under tn,
influence of ether
| cut open the right side of thu
| thick skull and sure enough, a spin
tered piece of bone from an old dc
pressed fracture pressed into tn
brain
| lifted n drascad n with acapticc