Year: 1875

An Interesting Medical Casc--Tho Vital


Parts of the system.


1t is some days, says the New York
Herald, since bullet weighing half an
ounce was lodged in the brain of Mr..
Carruth, the Vineland editor, and he is
still alive and this fact is scarcely com
prehensible to the many, who conceive
the brain as in itself so essentially vital
that any injury to it is followed inevi-
tably and almost Immediately by death.
indie d, popular knowledge is only di
vided between the brain and the heart
as the essential seats of vitality and it
was great puzzle to people when, some
years ago, pistol bullet was lodged in
the heart of the well known Bill Poole,
and that comparatively decent bravo of
city politics did not Immediately die. In
Poole's case the bullet was certainly
lodged in the MUSCULAR walls of the
heart, and it might have been as safe
there as in almost any other muscle, if
repose and attention had eased the labor
of the heart till careful nature could have
reinforced the walls and providedagainst
accidents but an enemy was permitted
to enter his room too early-there was a
new alteration, an excitement, and, the
heart being forced to an untimely en-
ergy, the thin septum of muscle that
kept the bullet in a safeplace was broken
through, the function of the organ was
interfered with and death came. 1t is
Just as certain in this case that Carruth's
brain is wounded-yet he lives and
people who find that shot in heart or
brain may yet not be fatal, will begin to
mistrust their revolvers.


It is not impossible for man to live
with the most serious injury to the brain,
and even to live for many years. Every
medical museum has specimens which
exhibit that life is not necessarily cut
short by the presence in the brain of
substances presumably as injurious as
bullets. In museum at Montpelier, in
France, is the skull of so dier who lived
many years with bullet in his brain,
and one can see plainly the evidence of
the efforts made by nature, like skillful
engineer, to prevent interference with
her ordinary operations. Assisted, per-
haps, by some shreds of the internal
periosteum, she had constructed pro
cess of bone under the bullet-between
| it and the brain-and reduced it to the
character of harmless neighbor. In
the practice of DIR. Detmond, Of this city,
we believe there once occurred the case
of a man who, in some blasting opera
tions, had sort of small crowbar or rock
drill driven through his brainsinto the
head at one side and out at the other
and who recovered from the wound at
the time, but died subsequently from its
effects by the formation of an abcess
and the exhausting drain made by a
large pyogenic tract. Cases might be
produced in illustration to almost any
extent


Wounds in the brain are fatal imme-
diately, as q rule, by the fact that they
open large arteries or that they iniure
parts essential to the performance of
some of the absolutely necessary func-
tions, like respiration; and they are fatal
later, by leading to inflammation. Arte-
ries and large veins are SO ramified in
the brain that it is scarcely possible to
shoot into it without inducing extensive
hemorrhage, and the blood thus let out
from the vessels does not flow away by
the wound, but is plugged in by the
bullet or by the elasticity of the jelly
like substance, and acts as the same
fluid does in case of apoplexy, by
pressure and interference with cerebral
functions. But it is possible to put in
bullet without opening either any con-
siderable artery or large vein, and with
out touching the parts of the brain that
preside over the operations of animal
life. This is, apparently, what has oc-
Cured in Carruth's case. He was shot
in the back of the head, and the bullet
went upward and to the right. 1t is
perhaps lodged against the bone at the
summit of the right cerebral hemis-
phere. Or if it reached that point with
the force just short of what was neces
sary to penetrate it has passed by the
inclination of the bone to q point not far
from the right eye.


AS the man reasons and is conscious
: the interior portion of the hemisphere is
not greatly injured and is not much, il
at all, pressed upon by clot. 1t is not
probable, therefore, that the arteries
, near the eye are opened, yet the circu
lation of the eye is interfered with, as is
indicated by the condition of the lid and
by the condition of the eye itself, for the
optic nerve is not injured, and the loss


of sight is due to trouble caused, per
haps, by pressure, and it may be by
: pressure of the bullet in the immediate
, vicinity of the orbital chamber.


e An FxamDle and n Fact.