THE RELATION OF INJURY AND GLIOMA OF THE BRAIN

Abstract

The question of the relationship between injury to the head and the later development of cerebral tumor is by no means a simple one to answer. Nevertheless, it has become of increasing importance from the standpoints both of workman's compensation and of insurance claims involving double indemnity when death can be proved as being due to injury. From the medicolegal standpoint, counsel in a given case may elect to look up the subject in the more easily available textbooks. Therein may be found considerable difference of opinion, actually conflicting testimony and much that is guarded and indefinite. For example, Gowers¹had little doubt that trauma occasionally is the immediate excitant of a growth, and Bramwell²considered that in some cases injury was undoubtedly a proximate cause. Ten years later his son, Edwin Bramwell,³stated that all available data usually fail to afford evidence which justifies an assumption