Medicine: Skull-less Adult

At Toronto last week one Norman Douglas pulled at his dark brown hair. It came off his head, a wig. Exposed was a skull cap, like the Pope’s. Only, instead of being white it was dark green. Norman Douglas put his hands carefully on his cap.

It came off, an inverted bowl of bakelite. Exposed was a crazy-quilt of skin patches, splotched with blue and red and white, and pulsating. Norman Douglas’ skull, rotting from a 5.000 h. p. electric shock two years ago,* had been removed piece by piece. For each piece his surgeons—Drs. R. E. Gaby and K. G. McKengie of Toronto—had grafted a piece of skin from his thighs to what remained of his scalp. Frailly covered thus was his brain.

The surgeons took away in all 60 sq. in. of Norman Douglas’ skull, preserved them at the Toronto General Hospital. They are proof for a professional paper that Dr. Gaby is writing. Never before, so far as the two surgeons can learn from the medical literature, has an adult lost so much skull and lived. Nor children. Sometimes a baby is born without a skull top, dead.

On an early account of this skull replacement, the Journal of the American Medical Association last week unhappily commented: “It’s even worse Without Brains.”

* The current supplied 28 Ontario towns. The accident made them dark.