Traumatic injuries of the brain and its membranes : with a special study of pistol-shot wounds of the head in their medico-legal and surgical relations / by Charles Phelps.

  • Charles Phelps
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Traumatic injuries of the brain and its membranes : with a special study of pistol-shot wounds of the head in their medico-legal and surgical relations / by Charles Phelps. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    In an appended series, all those cases in which necropsy was had, and a certain number of others which terminated in recovery or in which necropsy was otherwise impracti- cable, have been collated. This course has permitted the preservation of continuity in the text by the omission of interpolated illustrative cases, has afforded a means for the disproval of possible unwarranted or erroneous deductions, and has preserved much material for the use of indepen- dent observers hereafter. They have been classified sim- ply from their relation to cranial fractures, and this, though an imperfect method of classification, is, by reason of the miiltiplicity of lesions in individual cases, the only one which has seemed practicable. The lesions which attend pistol-shot wounds of the head have been considered apart from general injuries, as a method more clearly presenting their distinctive character- istics. Their complete history has necessitated an abstract of the results of a series of cadaveric experiments, instituted to determine for legal purposes the extent to which the conditions under which they have been inflicted can be predicated from the appearances they present. These observations have been sufficiently extensive to better define not only the positive value, but the limitations, of medical evidence in such cases than has been heretofore possible. This portion of the work which directly concerns medical jurisprudence is especially designed for the use of the legal profession in more precisely estimating the proper weight to be given to expert testimony in cases of this character. , • i,- •„ The author has much pleasure in acknowledgmg his in- debtedness to his colleagues of the Fourth Surgical Dna- sion of Bellevue Hospital, Dr. Jno. W. S. Gouley and Dr. Wm. F. Fluhrer, and of the Surgical Service of St \m- cenf s Hospital, Drs. Stephen Smith, Frederick S. Dennis and Jos. D. Bryant, through whose courtesy his oppor- tunities for clinical observation have been greatly ex-