Wounds of the brain : an essay read by appointment before the Luzerne county Medical Society at Wilkes-Barre, Jan'y 14, 1885 / by J.B. Crawford. Published by request of the society.

  • Crawford, John Barclay, 1828-1894.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Wounds of the brain : an essay read by appointment before the Luzerne county Medical Society at Wilkes-Barre, Jan'y 14, 1885 / by J.B. Crawford. Published by request of the society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    12/34 (page 6)
    extremity originate in the upper third of this motor area. Injuries of other portions of the brain may often be inferred by certain nervous phenomena; but the localization of most other functions of the cerebral hemispheres has not yet been ascertained with such accuracy as to make it a reliable and infallible basis of diagnostic opinion or of surgical procedure. The location of the human brain is such as to make it especially liable to a great number and variety of traumatic injuries. Forming the highest portion of an erect body, exceedingly liable to be overturned, it usually receives from such an accident the severest shock that is borne by any portion of the system. It is the objective point of fists, bludgeons and missiles in all personal encounters; and it seems to be the recipient of an undue proportion of the in- juries resulting from accidental causes. In war it en- counters a larger proportion of destructive missiles than come in contact with any other portion of the body of cor- responding size. The delicacy of the structure of this organ, and the want of firmness or tenacity of its tissues renders it liable to destructive lesions from a degree of violence that would do little harm to other portions of the system. A blow from the fist upon any portion of the cranium leaving, perhaps, no external mark of violence, may cause a fatal lesion of some portion of the brain; or the re- sulting concussion may, without appreciable lesion, so shock and paralyze the nervous centres as to endanger, or. perhaps to destroy life.* Or a haemorrhage within the cranium may be produced by similar apparently slight causes, and by its pressure involve an equally dangerous result. But it is the more violent forms of injury of the brain and its associated organs that I propose at present to con-