Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VII. Craniectomy And Asexualization. Craniectomy. Craniectomy is a singular exception to many brilliant successes that have attended surgical demonstration of scientific theory. Studies in etiology and experiments, in treatment of microcephalic idiocy, developed a theory that possibly the premature closing of the fonta- nelle, and the ossification of the cranial sutures, had arrested the growth of the brain which, thus locked in a cell of bone, could no longer expand, nor attain to functional activity. The logical deduction from such reasoning was, that expansion would follow the reopening of the skull with consequent development of the brain, and thus the operation would prove an open door to future intelligence. Nor was this theory wholly without basis, for there had been cases showing unmistakable signs of pressure, the result either of accident or of an undoubted history of premature closure of the fontanelle; but these were rare exceptions, and certainly not cases of true microcephaly. The first to put into practice the theory formulated, was Fuller, of Montreal, Canada, who in 1878 operated upon an idiot two years old, the only result claimed being some slight mental improvement, after temporary paralysis. In the case of a second experiment made some years later by Lane in the United States, the patient died within fourteen hours after the operation. During the year of 1890, investigations were pursued coincident- ally in France, England, and America, by men all eminent in the profession?Lannelongue of Paris, Victor Horsley of London, and W. W. Keen of Philadelphia. Some 56 operations, by John Barlow, Boekel, Peau and others followed in rapid succession. Of these, 13 died, and for 24 only, of the 43 children who recovered, a very slight improvement …
