Living Without His Skull

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 90, 5 February 1887, Page 3

Living Without His Skull

Most people would say that it is impossible that a man could live without a skull. The thing would seem the more impossible in the case of a man who wasn't " born that way." And yet, even this seemed impossibility is but a seeming oue. T. P. Woodall, a man who died yesterday at Hartsells, Ala., from the effects of a fall from a railroad car, had lived five years without a skull. He was found five years ago lying in a fit before an open hearth, his he; d amid the hot embers of an expiring fire. The entire top of his head down to liis eyes had been burned to a crisp, and instant death seemed inevitable. As a last resort, the surgeons removed the entire skull as low down as the sockets oi the eyes and equally as far in the rear. An artificial covering was placed over the bruin to protect it from exposure, and in a few weeks a thin film formed, over it, and, strange to say, the man lived, retaining all his faculties. The membrane never hardened, and to the hour of his death the convolutions of the brain could be easily discerned and its throbbings clearly seen.