The Washburn times. [volume] (Washburn, Wis.) 1896-1976, 1912-08-08
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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 it's
hands in dismay and breathing hard
In the realization that the war was
not, after all, to be a picnic for the
northern troops, l, 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, l des wisht yoh come an see my
Samson. He pears mons'ous curious,
an he acts des like he 'stracted."
At her cabin l 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 a tendency to bear off to one side
as he walked, an apparent inability to
talk, and possessed Of a persistent eff
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 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 / DIES skeered plumb outer my
senses, dat l is
I 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 1t
that was so evenly drawn that it at
tracted my attention, but in the STIR
ring events of those days really paid
scant heed to so trifling q case as
Samson's, and SO apparently trivial an
indication as was that level streak on
the wall
His mother was still talking.
Ode reason dat all de table an
cheers is in de floor, doctah, is dat
Samson he des runs inter all of 'em
if dey close to de wall Peers like he
des 'bleeged skim along close up as
eber he kin. Dat dar streak is whar
his elbow scrapes along all day an
all night, 'cep when somebody's sitten',
holdin' his han er feelin' his pulst,
like yoh Is now"
Young and inexperienced as I was,
even this did not give me clew, and
l left, after giving some trifling advice
and remedy.
l spent several years in Paris and
in Germany after the war, and it was
not until 1886 that / was back in
Washington
We had an international convention
there at the time, and were taken to
various public institutions, among
which was 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 had wholly forgotten.
Before noon the next day we had
Samsons small room looking like a
hospital operating room, and the great
black frame lay on the table under the
influence of ether.
cut open the right side of the
thick skull, and sure enough, spin
tered piece of bone from an old de-
pressed fracture pressed into the
brain
l lifted it, dressed it with aseptics,