The Weekly Journal. — 1902-10-03 (Hartlepool, Cleveland, England)

BULLETS IN BRAIN&  REMARKABLE EXAMPLES.  The idea that the human brain is an organ es extremely delicate in its structure that it cannot bear the slightest physical hart .so_.. times appears to receive a contradiction is the experience of people who have met with peculiar injuries to the head. The history of brain say. gery presents some remarkable facts in regard to the extent to which the thinking organ will sometimes resist the effects of external injury. It has been shown that in certain cases quantiI ties of its substance may be removed without appreciably diminishing the normal 1044 grace of the patient; while some have hen known to carry the most extraordinary forein substances embedded in their skulls for years. •  _ 1 Curious "Finds." , Finds of the most singular kind has hen I made in the interior substance of the living I human brain. The strangest things have been I known to End entry there through accident or ' design. In one case it was the blade of a pen. knife that was carried about in the brain for half a lifetime without the patient being in the least aware of it; in another it was a penholder that had somehow found its way there and remained in its living hiding place without sp. parently interfering with the thinking power of , the organ while recently a piece of slate pencil I vas recovered from a boy's brain fter it had ' been hidden there for several years. It is. therefore, perhaps none the more aor prising( that many a bullet which has found its billet in a human brain has proved no mote than a temporary inconvenience. A French soldier who received a bullet ia hie head during the Franco-German Wa.r of 1871 carried it there for 27 years, and, was said to have felt no ill effects till 1887, when it one day worked its way downward into the mouth, asa so rid him of its presence. In the case of a German soldier who was that in the head during the " Sonderband " War, he lived to carry the leaden souvenir in his brain for 43 years, and it was not extracted till after his death.  These two remarkable caws, however, seem ta be beaten by another that has recently been brought to light, the case being that of an old soldier still living who for over half a century has carried in his head the bullet received during the Austrian rebellion of 184 A. Two Bullets In NI. Brain.  Would-be suicide, have occasionally put but lets into their brain to no purpose, and perhaps one of the most astounding eases of recent year% was that dealt with at the Richmond Homiital. London. only a year or so ago. The patient had in vain trim( to take his life by shooting himself in the head, and after thus placing two bullets in his brain be was immediately conveyed in a cab to the hospital. But he was so little affected at the time by the presence of the huh lets in hit head that be actually alighted from the vehicle, walked along the garden path and up the steps of the hospital, and was then able to give an intelligent account of what bad taken place. In a similar cage of self-inflicted injury that eatre before the doctors at Guy's Hospital, London, a few months later the would-be suicide, after firing a revolver bullet into his head. was discovered smoking his pipe as nothing very serious had happened and though the bullet bad penetrated the skull to a depth of three and a half inches, lie was able to walk part of the way to the hospital and there us. dress himself without assistance previous to undergoing examination.