Observations placeholder
Hallucinations from gunshot wound
Identifier
006575
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Harefuah. 2003 Mar;142(3):227-30, 236. [Gunshot brain injury--Rishon-le-Zion 1913]. [Article in Hebrew] Feinsod M. Division of Clinical Neurosciences, Rambam (Maimonides) Medical Center, B. Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
Dr. Leon Pochovski (1869-1965), the first fully trained surgeon to settle in Eretz-Israel, was summoned in 1913 from Jaffa to Rishon-le-Zion to treat a patient who sustained a tangential gunshot injury of the brain from a bullet shot at nearly point blank range, in the right occipital region.
As the patient's condition deteriorated intracranial bleeding was diagnosed.
Dr. Pochovski did not hesitate to operate and successfully removed an intracerebral hematoma.
At first there were no visual symptoms, but on the 11th day there was hemianopia due to dysfunction of the initially uninvolved left hemisphere. It became progressed and then cleared. The hemianopia was associated with diplopia and created hallucinations in the blind field.
The mode of treatment and the learned discussion of the uncommon symptomatology demonstrate that the practicing physicians were providing clinical service that did not differ in the technical standards and academic level from that of their colleagues overseas.
PMID: 12696480