Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.Medicine: Shotgun Surgery
She was a Maine woman, a widow of 45, and she lived alone. When she had made up her mind to commit suicide, she laid her chin on the muzzle of a 12-gauge shotgun and pulled the trigger. The charge tore through her tongue, palate and nose, went on through the front part of the brain and out through the forehead. But she did not die.
Later, in Boston's Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Plastic Surgeon Edgar M. Holmes loosened her tongue (held fast by scar tissue), closed the hole in the roof of her mouth, replaced the bones in the nose...
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