Union Pac. Ry. Co. v. Yates

• Decision Date: 22 March 1897
• Docket Number: 802.
• Citation: 79 F. 584
• Parties: UNION PAC. RY. CO. et al. v. YATES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

79 F. 584

UNION PAC. RY. CO. et al. v. YATES.

No. 802.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

March 22, 1897

John N Baldwin, for plaintiffs in error.

James McCabe(Charles M. Harl and George E. Hibner with him on the brief), for defendant in error.

Before SANBORN and THAYER, Circuit Judges, and LOCHREN, District judge.

THAYER Circuit Judge.

Horace W. Yates, the defendant in error, sued the Union Pacific Railway Company and its receivers, who are the plaintiffs in error, for injuries sustained in a railway collision, which occurred on November 22, 1892, near the town of Alda, in the state of Nebraska, on the line of the Union Pacific Railroad.The plaintiff below was a mail agent in the service of the United States, and he was riding in that capacity on one of the trains at the time of the collision.The injuries which the plaintiff sustained in consequence of the collision, to all outward appearances, were not serious.One of his arms and one of his legs were bruised, but not broken and his left ear was cut, but beyond this his body appears to have borne no visible marks of injury.It was contended at the trial, however, that the plaintiff sustained a severe shock, which affected the nerves of the spine, and had produced a dangerous and progressive disease of the spinal cord, which had permanently disabled him, and was liable to prove fatal.In support of this contention, the plaintiff offered in evidence, and was allowed to read to the jury over the objection of the defendant company, certain extracts from a book or monograph, which was published by Dr. John Eric Erichsen, entitled 'On Concussion of the Spine and Nervous Shock and Other Obscure Injuries to the Nervous System, in Their Clinical and Medico-Legal Aspects. ' The material parts of the extract thus read were as follows:

'It is well known to every surgeon of experience that no injury to the head is too trifling to be despised.This observation, made of old by Hippocrates, may be applied with equal, if not greater, justice to injuries of the spine; for, if the brain is liable to suffer serious primary lesion and protracted secondary disease from the infliction of slight, and perhaps, at the time, apparently trivial, injuries to the head, the spinal cord is at least equally prone to become functionally disturbed and organically diseased from injuries sustained by the vertebral column.

'My object in these lectures will be to direct your attention to certain injuries of the spine that may arise from accidents that are often apparently slight, from shocks to the body generally, as well as from blows inflicted directly upon the back, and to describe the train of progressive symptoms that lead up to the obscure, protracted, and often dangerous diseases of the spinal cord and its membranes, that sooner or later are liable to supervene thereon.These injuries of the spine and spinal cord occur not unfrequently in the ordinary accidents of civil life, in falls, blows, horse and carriage accidents, injuries in gymnasiums, etc., but in none more frequently or with greater severity than in those which are sustained by persons who have been subjected to the violent shock of a railway collision.And if, in these lectures, I speak more of the injuries of the spine arising from this than from any other class of accidents, it is not because I wish to make a distinction in injuries of spine according to their causes, and still less to establish anything like a specialty of 'railway surgery,' but rather because injuries of the nervous system of the kind we are about to discuss have become of much practical importance from the great frequency of their occurrence, consequent on the extension of railway traffic, and because they are so frequently the cause of litigation.There is also a special and painful interest attaching to them from the distressing character of the symptoms presented by the sufferers.Moreover, in these cases there is always a peculiar difficulty, which is often greatly increased by the absence of evidence of outward and direct physical injury, by the development of the secondary organic lesions, and the functional derangements entailed by them, and the very uncertain nature of the ultimate issues of the case.Thus, they constitute a class of injuries that often tax the diagnostic skill of the surgeon to the very utmost.* * *

'I wish particularly and very specially to impress upon you that, although I shall have frequent occasion to speak of 'shocks' to the nervous system arising from railway accidents, I do not consider that these injuries stand in a different category from accidents occurring from other causes in civil life; and it will be one of the main objects of these lectures to show you that precisely the same effects may result from other and more ordinary injuries.It must, however, be evident to you all that in no ordinary accidents can the shock, physical and mental, be so great as those that occur on railways.The rapidity of the movement, the momentum of the persons injured and of the vehicle that carries them, the suddenness of its arrest, the helplessness of the sufferers, and the natural perturbation of mind that must disturb the bravest, are all circumstances which increase the severity of the resulting injury to the nervous system, and which have led surgeons to consider these cases as somewhat exceptional and different from ordinary accidents.There is, in fact, much the same difference between these and the more ordinary injuries of the nervous system as there is between a gunshot wound and other contused and lacerated wounds of the limbs.The cause is special, and the results are peculiar; but, though peculiar, they are not so unlike those arising from other accidents as to justify us in regarding them as being in any essential respect distinct and different.The peculiarity of those obscure shocks is sufficiently great, however, to warrant us in grouping them together and considering them as a whole in a separate chapter in the great book of surgery.Perhaps the one circumstance which more than any other gives a peculiar character to a railway accident is the thrill or jar-- the 'ebranlement' of French writers; the sharp vibration, in fact-- that is transmitted through everything subjected to it.It is this vibratory shock or jar which by some is compared to an electric shock, by others to setting the teeth on edge, that causes a carriage to be shattered into splinters, and occasions the sharp, tremulous movements that run through every fiber of its occupants, and that constitutes the shock.In addition to this, the body of the traveler is thrown to and fro often five or six times, without any power of resistance or self-preservation.* * *

'In considering these injuries, I shall adopt the following arrangement: (1) The effects of severe blows directly applied to the spine, but without obvious lesion of the bone or ligament.(2) The consideration of the effects of slight and apparently trivial injuries applied directly to the spine.(3) The effects that injuries of distant parts of the body, or that shocks of the system, unattended by any direct blow upon the back, have upon the spinal cord.(4) The effects produced by sprains, wrenches, or twists of the spine. * * *

'My object in the present lecture is to direct your attention to a class of cases in which the injury inflicted upon the back is either very slight in degree, or in which the blow, if more severe, has fallen upon some other part of the body than the spine, and in which, consequently, its influence upon the cord has been of a less direct and often of a less instantaneous character.Nothing is more common than that the symptoms of spinal mischief do not develop for several days after heavy falls on the back.The symptoms arising from these accidents have been very variously interpreted by surgeons, some ignoring them entirely, believing that they exist only in the imagination of the patient, or, if they do admit their existence, they attribute them to other conditions of the nervous system than any that could arise from the alleged accident.And when their connection with and dependence upon an injury have been incontestably proved, no little discrepancy of opinion has arisen as to the ultimate results of the case, the permanence of the symptoms, and the curability, or not, of the patient.

'I have often remarked that in railway accidents those passengers suffer most seriously from concussion of the nervous system who sit with their backs turned towards the end of the train which is struck.Thus, when a train runs into an obstruction on the line, those who are sitting with their backs to the engine will probably suffer most; whilst if a train is run into from behind, those who are facing the engine will most frequently be the greatest sufferers.* * * Those who are facing the engine are in the first instance thrown suddenly and violently forward off their seats against the opposite side of the compartment; hence they will frequently be found to be cut about the head and face, and more especially across the knees and legs, by coming in contact with the edge of the opposite seats.They then rebound, and in the rebound may sustain that concussion of the spine which they escape in the first shock.Those, on the other hand, who are sitting with their backs to the engine, being carried backward, when the momentum of the carriage is suddenly arrested, are struck at once, and, if traveling rapidly, are jerked violently against the backs of their seats, and thus suffer, in the first instance and by the first shock, from concussion of the spine....