TRACK OF A BULLET

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 May 1935, Page 3

TRACK OF A BULLET

DEATH 20 YEARS AFTER AVAR. LONDON, April 2. For 1 20 years William Hornby,-a 43-year-old chemical labourer, walked and worked with a bullet in his brain, it was disclosed at a Paddington inquest yesterday. Hornby, who lived at Beswick-street, Northwich, Cheshire, died in the National Hospital for Brain Diseases on Monday, and the. coroner, Mr. Ingleby Oddie, described the case as an interesting one to scientists, surgeons, and pathologists. While serving -in Mesopotamia Hornby received a bullet wound in -the back of the neck, but nobody knew that the bullet had penetrated his skull, and since the war he had been able' to work apparently in good health. In 1933 he became unable to carry on and developed very curious symptoms, He had fits of unconsciousness and tearfulness. head began to shake and his arm to move continuously up and down. He then, lost the use of his legs and became completely incapable. Finally he was unable to speak, did not realise where he was, and was a completely broken -man. “A post mortem’examination shows that the bullet had traversed his brain, up to the top of his skull, where it lodged against the membranes lining the inside of the skull.” Mr. Oddie said.

“In the course of all these years the track made by the bullet through the brain has become calcified, making a tunnel, and in the course ot time the mllet dropped to the ; bottom, “It was not at all improbable that the lead of the bullet had gradually poisoned Hornby by absorption.” Dr. Joseph Greenfield, pathologist, of the National Hospital, said that the cause of death was pneumonia accelerated by cerebral degeneration, which he thought was due to a considerable extent to absorption of metallic salts from the bullet.

A verdict, of death from war wounds was returned. ,