Word: braining
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...year-old baker in the University of California hospital in San Francisco was dying of a tumor at the base of his brain. The swelling growth was pressing on the basilar artery, one of the brain's major blood suppliers, and eight of the main nerves in his skull were being compressed into uselessness. The patient's speech was garbled and slurred, he regurgitated much of the little he could eat, he had double vision, part of the right side of his body was paralyzed, and he suffered from fits of uncontrollable, inappropriate laughter...
...tragedy was compounded by the fact that once X rays and arteriograms had confirmed their diagnosis, the doctors were stumped. Bold brain surgeons have been probing and cutting deeper and deeper inside the human skull, but the floor of the brain box, where the patient's tumor was growing, has remained virtually inviolate. Nerves, arteries and other vital parts of the anatomy are all crammed into that small central sanctuary behind the nose and mouth. There they rise through openings in the floor of the skull and reach toward the brain above (see diagram). So complex is the collection...
...Pivot. Then his case came to the attention of the neurosurgery department at the University of California Medical Center. There, like so many neurosurgeons before him, Dr. George C. Stevenson had been challenged by that seemingly impregnable floor of the skull. While studying blood flow in the brains of monkeys, he had learned how to slice through the anatomical maze at the brain's base with the aid of a binocular surgical microscope, and he had practiced putting tourniquets on the basilar artery...
...hitting hasn't done anything to you, but you have to hit him anyway." Three years ago, Griffith lost his temper in the ring-when Benny Paret noted Emile's tight pants and his singsong Virgin Islands speech and questioned his masculinity. Paret died of brain injuries in that fight, and Griffith has brooded ever since over the massacre. "I try to think it was fate," he says. "I try real hard. But I always know that I was the guy Benny was boxing...
...immortality by discovering and describing the blood flow in brain arteries that are now known as "the Circle of Willis...