Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1890 — A TONGUELESS TALKER. [ARTICLE]

A TONGUELESS TALKER.

The Texas Who Chats with a Wire-Hang Month. A man without tongas or palate—yet he lives, laughs, and, most wonderful of all, he talks. And there isn’t a physician in the land who can explain why. The operation, which was performed recently in the Charity Hospital upon Col. George Washington, is the 6ame identically as that performed on Gen. Grant and Emperor Frederick. A man who is compelled to undergo it has just one chance in a hundred for his life. This is the Colonel’s story, as he told it himself yesterday: “It was in ’79," said the Colonel, “out in El Paso, Texas. I had charge of the Comanche Indian Reservation, on the Estacado Llano, or ‘Staked Plain.’ I had a dispatch for Fort Sill which had to he got through somehow. So I got my hroncho and started out to deliver it myself, though the country swarmed with hostile Apaches. Four red devils in ambush on the Toad sent four arrows whizzing after me. One of the arrows struck me in the neck under the right ear, and went in about three inches. I pulled it out, and the wound healed up. It never bothered me until last November, when it began to trouble me considerably. A sort of sore appeared on the back of the tongue. Last December I came East and went to Bellevue Hospital, but the doctors there could afford me no relief. You see, that arrow the varmint hit me with was poisoned.” he explained, dryly. “While at Bellevue I met Prof. T. J. Kelly, and he said that if I would submit to &n operation he would Bave my life.” The Colonel was taken to the Charity Hospital. Prof. Kelly and Dr. Van Rensselaer, of the house staff, performed the operation. They gave him chloroform and kept him under its influence for four hours and a half. They first cut down through the chin, sawing the bone in two and laying open the lower jaw on both sides clear back to the ears. They took out all the glands that could iu any way have become affected by the poison and removed the entire tongne and palate. In splitting open the jaw they broke the muscles that hold the jaw in place and control its movements. In place of them they substituted two little silver hinges, which work exactly like a spring door hinge. “I can open my mouth, but were it not for the little spring hingas I could never close it again," says the Colonel grimly. Where they sawed the chin in two they brought it together again and made it all fa=t with stitches of silver wire. “I have lost all sense of taste or smell and I’ll never have another square meal,” and here the Colonel sighed deeply. “Have the doctors any theory or explanation to offer regarding your ability to speak?” asked the reporter. “No.” replied the Colonel. Col. Watson was a Confederate during the war, and was in command of the Eighth Texas Rangers. He can carry on a conversation quite distinctly, but keeps his mouth closed while talking. His words sound thick and husky. In physique he is strong and robust. —San Francisco Examiner.