The present European war, with its colossal total of wounds, many of which inevitably involve the peripheral nerves, has aroused an added interest and stimulated additional research in the surgery of this system. Brachial plexus injuries in the adult, aside from those resulting from gunshot or stab wounds, or secondary to skeletal injuries, are rare, as was shown in 1911 by Frazier and Skillern,1who were able to collect reports of only twenty-one cases which had been verified by operation. Anatomically the brachial plexus, located almost subcutaneously in the root of the neck and unprotected by the skeleton, is vulnerable to direct injury. Direct trauma used to be considered the most frequent cause of injury to these nerves until experimentation by Horsley2and Taylor,3and a closer study of etiologic mechanics convinced observers that injury of the plexus did not frequently result from pinching them between the