Medicine: Prizefighters’ Brains

Prizefighter Ernie Schaaf who died after his ring hammering from monstrous Primo Camera (TIME, Feb. 20) was buried at Wrentham, Mass, last week without his brain. His brain remained in Manhattan, scene of the fight, for medical legalists to determine just what caused the death. Primo Camera might have committed murder. Or Schaaf might merely have died during a crisis in his professional life. Jimmy Walker’s brother Dr. William H. Walker, who was last week under charges of splitting fees on municipal medical work, had—as medical attache of the New York Boxing Commission—certified that Schaaf was fit to fight.

Between Schaaf’s crumpling in the ring and his death three days later he lay in coma. Dr. Philip Goodhart, professor of Clinical Neurology at Columbia, came in on the case as consultant. He found Schaaf’s left side paralyzed. The condition of the fighter’s eyes confirmed the diagnosis of a deep-seated lesion in the right side of the brain. To relieve pressure and explore the injury Dr. Byron Polk Stookey, Columbia brain surgeon, cut a 3 1/2 in. disk from the right side of Schaaf’s skull. Only a small hemorrhage was visible. But there was much swelling.

After Schaaf’s death Dr. Charles Norris, chief medical examiner, ordered dissection of the brain. His assistants hardened the organ, sliced it microscopically thin. The microscope showed that Schaaf, before he went into his last fight, had been suffering from a chronic or subacute inflammation of the brain. In January he had an attack of influenza. Dr. Norris reported: “The cause of the inflammation cannot be known with certainty, but it may be referred to the … influenza with a reasonable degree of probability.” When monstrous Primo Camera understood what this meant, he was vastly relieved.

The inflammation, continued Dr. Norris in his report, “obviously antedated the boxing match, but because of its insidious development it would not necessarily give symptoms and would have been highly improbable to detect at the time of the physical examination before the bout. In the ring, however, it interfered with Schaaf’s boxing skill so that he was less able to avoid blows. In addition, blows not in themselves dangerous aggravated the meningo encephalitis [inflammation].” At Albany, New York State Senators chattered about repealing “Mayor” Walker’s boxing laws, and safeguarding the health of boxers. At Boston, a Massachusetts State Senator filed a bill to forbid boxers who differ more than 15 lb. in weight striking each other. Meanwhile sports reporters gave clues which alert Medicine seemed likely to heed. Grantland Rice observed: “Head punching has left in its wake a long line of shambling, goofy, punch-drunk fighters who walk about on their heels in the paper doll ward with badly scrambled brains.

“I have seen more than a few of these, and they are not pretty to look at. Their eyes carry only the ghost of a dead mentality.

“I know that Dempsey was offered as much as $500,000 to take one more shot. But deep in his mind was the nightmare of a thought that too much head punishment would do him little good, no matter how much money he had.

“Gene Tunney was a hard man to hit around the head, but Tunney also had this fear. He was smart enough to know that one hard punch delivered at the right spot might leave a lasting effect. . . .”

Westbrook Pegler commented: “The prize fight laws recognize punching on the head as quite legal, barring only the rabbit punch [chopping the back of the neck] which is often permitted, nevertheless, so if there must be prize fighting, there must be fatalities and also a regular crop of mental defectives. . . .”