INJURIES OF THE BRAIN.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 105, 12 April 1876, Page 3

INJURIES OF THE BRAIN.

DkLlcAte as the organisation ,of the brain must he, it is surprising to read of the hard knocks it can bear, not only without injury, but even to its advantage. One man who lost half his brain through suppuration of the skull, preserved his intellectual faculties to the day of his death ; and the brains of soldiers have been known to carry bullets without apparent inconvenience, and to undergo operations for the extrication of foreign boffins’ without loss of power A physician, who Was afflicted with an abnormal cerebral growth which pressed upon the cavities of the brain, so as to paralyze one side of his body and render him speechless, retained possession of his reasoning and calculating powers until he died. One of three brothers, all idiots, after receiving severe injury on the head, gained his senses, and lived to he a clever barrister. A stable-boy of dull capacity, and subject to fits, had his wits sharpened by a kick of a horse, which necessitated the abstraction of a portion of his brain ; and no less a personage than Pope Clement VI., owed the improvement of his memory to a slight concussion of the brain. On the other hand, it is a fact that the brains of persons with thoroughly disordered minds, as a rule present no abnormal appearance after death, which is not to be wondered at, Dr Wynter declares, when it is found that symptoms of a disordered brain are often produced by a very slight alteration in the constitution of the blood.—Chamber’s Journal.