Alexandria Gazette, Commercial And Political

The Advocate of the People, a paper printed at Auburn by H. C. Southwick gives the following;

Capital Piece of Surgery. On Tuesday the 3d day of September last, a son of Mr. Joel Calkins, of this town, about seven years old, was in company with a man who was dragging logs together with a pair of oxen and who fastened his team with a chain three feet from the small ends of two beech poles, fourteen feet in length and five inches in diameter each at the large ends: then driving quickly along with said poles, the boy walking in company with him, the small end of one of the poles catching into the ground, the large end thereof was raised with a quick motion perpendicularly over and obliquely forward, so that the very extremity of it struck said boy on the left and superior or upper side of his head and levelled him to the ground, from whence he was raised and supposed to be dead for some minutes, but by moving and shaking him, he was enabled to breathe again.

Medical aid was immediately procured, and his skull being laid extensively bare with the knife, the forehead, the temple and the upper and back parts of the left side of his head were found fractured and shattered to pieces in a very shocking manner, and a portion of his skull, 5 and half inches long and 2 and half wide, on the left side of his head, was bent in upon the brain from 1/8th to 1/3rd of an inch deep, excepting at one end of two inches wide where it was connected to a solid portion of the skull: the fracture of the above depressed portion was half an inch larger in its whole extent on the inside of his skull than on the outside, it being sliced-off under, and thereby making the inner edge of it very sharp and irritating.

In consultation the operation of trepanning was determined on as the only alternative, and performed on Wednesday following, 15 hours after the accident. And it became indispensably necessary to make four perforations, or holes, through the skull, with the Trepan, before the depressed portion of his skull could be raised out of the brain and fixed in its proper position, though repeated efforts were made after each of the three first perforations with different elevators, without effect. In the course of the examination of the different fractures of his skull, sixteen broken and detached or loose pieces of bones of considerable size were found and removed, also a quantity of extravasated blood was discharged from beneath the skull.

The patient has been repeatedly and freely bled, blistered, and evacuated with physic; and is now eight weeks from the date of the accident, so far recovered as to be able to walk about the room, goes out of doors in fair weather without assistance, has a good appetite, is perfectly rational, and we have no doubt but he will perfectly recover.

The above surgical operations were performed, and case managed and treated, by Dr. Joseph Pitney, of this place, by whose request we visited this patient on the day of the operation.

Auburn. (Cayuga co. N. Y.) Oct. 98.

Joseph Cole, Campbell Wait, John B. Chamberlain, Joseph Clary, Jonathan Whitney--Consulting Physicians and Surgeons.