RECOVERY FROM A BROKEN NECK.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3600, 25 January 1883, Page 4

RECOVERY FROM A BROKEN NECK.

Jul in Collery. a San Francisco teamster, about live months ago, tried to drive his team through a barn-door, and in so doing had his bead forced down on bis breast until his neck was broken. Police-Surgeon Stambaugh found that the j-cvcnth cervical A-ertebra was fractured, and that tlie spinal cord had boon stretched nearly two inches. As the fatality in siuh cases is estimated at nine hundred and ninety-nine in one thousand, everybody gave up the hope of his recovery. Recently, hoAvever, a reporter met Collery on the street, who stated that ho was almost as well as before the accident, except for a. slight stiffness on his right side. After his removal to his home be was laid flat on bis back, with a sort of fence about his head, and neck Avhich kept him immovable for over two months. Both the body of the vertebra and the arching laminte Avere discovered to be broken, and the operation of joining them together Avithout pinching the spinal cord where ithad sagged between the ragged edges is described as one of flic most difficult ever performed. For a month the patient lay on his back, completely paralysed in one half of his body, and with but little feeling iv the other, if be moved in the slightest degree during tlie first fortnight, he coidd plainly fed the jagged edges of the bone grate together, and for hours after such an attempt he was content to lie em his hard bed Avithout attempting to move a, muscle for fear that the spinal cord should be crushed, and his existence ended in a twinkling'-. The straight position attainable was required, and Dr. Stambaugh Avas compelled to refuse the patient a mattress, forcing him to lie on a Avide plank. Collery says that before his eight Aveeks of enforced quietness Avas ended, he thought that board \v;is made of adamant, from' it.hardness. The most dangerous time he experienced, he says, Avas one day when an attendant told him that a man whose neck could stand breaking as his had Avas not born to be hanged. His desire to laugh ivas irresistible, and theshaking-uphismcr-rimciit gave him caused his fastenings to burst, and the fracture came near being ruptured afresh. The paralysis has hoav almost entirely disappeared, aud Dr. Stambaugh says that Collery "will be able to go to work Avithinsix months.—Frank Leslie's Illustrated.