a man who, as he supposed, received a wound in
the back by canister shot while serving on a Tartar privateer in 1779.
There was no ship-surgeon on board, and in about a month the wound
healed without surgical assistance. The man suffered little
inconvenience and performed his duties as a seaman, and was impressed
into the Royal Navy. In August, 1810, he complained of pain in the
lumbar region. He was submitted to an examination, and a cicatrix of
this region was noticed, and an extraneous body about 1/2 inch under
the integument was felt. An incision was made down it, and a rusty
blade of a seaman's clasp-knife extracted from near the 3d lumbar
vertebra. The man had carried this knife for thirty years. The wound
healed in a few days and there was no more inconvenience.

Fracture of the lower part of the spine is not always fatal, and
notwithstanding the lay-idea that a broken back means certain death,
patients with well-authenticated cases of vertebral fracture have
recovered. Warren records the case of a woman of sixty who, while
carrying a clothes-basket, made a misstep and fell 14 feet, the basket
of wet clothes striking the right shoulder, chest, and neck. There was
fracture of the 4th dorsal vertebra at the transverse processes. By
seizing the spinous process it could be bent backward and forward, with
the peculiar crepitus of fractured bone. The clavicle was fractured two
inches from the acromial end, and the sternal end was driven high up
into the muscles of the neck. The arm and hand were paralyzed, and the
woman suffered great dyspnea. There was at first a grave emphysematous
condition due to the laceration of several broken ribs. There was also
suffusion and ecchymosis about the neck and shoulder. Although
complicated with tertiary syphilis, the woman made a fair recovery, and
eight weeks later she walked into a doctor's office. Many similar and
equally wonderful injuries to the spine are on record.

The results sometimes following the operation of laminectomy for
fracture of the vertebrae are often marvelous. One of the most
successful on record is that reported by Dundore. The patient was a
single man who lived in Mahanoy, Pa., and was admitted to the State
Hospital for Injured Persons, Ashland, Pa., June 17, 1889, suffering
from a partial dislocation of the 9th dorsal vertebra. The report is
as follows--"He had been a laborer in the mines, and while working was
injured March 18, 1889, by a fall of top ro