A METHOD OF DRAINING CEREBRAL ABSCESSES

The purpose of this paper is to call attention to some of the more important physiologic and pathologic factors and principles underlying infection of brain tissue and to detail a method of treatment which in my hands has proved satisfactory. In an effort to do this I shall not go into the problems of etiology and symptomatology but shall confine my remarks to a brief summary of the operative and postoperative course in four cases chosen to illustrate three types of disease of the brain-traumatic disease, acute abscess and chronic abscess. I shall quote from textbooks excerpts which I think have a bearing on the method of drainage of abscess of the brain with which this treatise is concerned.Case 1.—W. F. S., a man about 35 years of age, was injured on May 4, 1925, by a piece of 1 by 1 inch (2.5 by 2.5 cm.) lumber driven