A Bullet to Their Brains Caused Little Mind Damage

 One of the very great investigation failures of today's psychologists and neuroscientists is their tendency to only search scientific papers when writing scientific papers. The fact is that there are huge additional sources of information providing very important cases of medical case histories. Those include newspapers and magazines. It is not hard to search for medical case histories documented in newspapers. For example, the free Chronicling America site allows you to search through more than 100 years of American newspapers. You can use the site by using the link below:

https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/about-this-collection/

 Below are some of the very interesting cases I get on that site when using the search phrase "brain gone." An account you can read here is entitled "Part of Brain Gone, But Galloway Lives."  We read of a man who tried to kill himself, by shooting himself in the head. We hear that he seemed to recover well, and "talks rationally" despite the fact that he destroyed part of his brain. We read nothing mentioning any mental damage. 

Another account similar to the one above is the account below, which you can read here. We read of a man who lost four ounces of his brain (about 8 percent) after shooting himself in the head. Despite the bad brain damage, after shooting himself the man learned how to play checkers (which he had not learned before), and also apparently played checkers very well. Soon after the shooting he died. 

A similar account is below. We read of a young boy who is of an "unusually bright mind" even though he was accidentally shot through the head.

A similar account is below, from 1910. We read of a boy who "carries on an intelligent conversation" even though he has lost "five square inches" of his brain. We may presume the "five square inches" means "five cubic inches," which is about 7% of a boy's brain. 

A similar account is below. In the 1908 account we read of a man who was shot through the head, losing about 4 ounces of brain, about 6% of the brain. But after this bad brain damage, he is "appparently...in possession of all his mental faculties."

The article below appeared in the New York Times. We read of a person who was left with half a brain after he shot himself in the head, with the wound being treated by surgeons removing additional brain tissue. The patient is described as "rational." We are told "it was believed a few days ago that he would recover completely." No one would have said such a thing unless the subject had relatively little damage to mind and memory. 

The 1912 article below (which you can read here) discusses the case of a soldier who was left with about half a brain, after he was accidentally shot by another soldier, and after surgeons operated on him. We are told that after five weeks the man was "about again as usual." We hear of damage to his ability to read and write, which was restored after five months of training. Other than that, we read no mention of any damage to his memory or intellect.  The claim that he was "about again as usual" five weeks after losing half of his brain suggests there was no very great damage to his mind or memory or speaking ability. Damage to reading and writing skills could be caused by damage to perceptual and muscle ability, and does not necessarily involve any memory loss.