ACCIDENT INSURANCE   501

ing the leg, and nature failed to dissolve or absorb it, wherefore the leg below the arrested clot received no nourishment and gangrene ensued.

This action was brought on the policy, plaintiff claiming that the loss of his leg was due to the puncture of the artery by the surgeon's needle, and that such needle, or the needle as used by the surgeon, constituted the "external, violent, and accidental means" of his loss, which was not "causd or contributed to * * * by sickness or disease."

At trial the court charged, in substance, that if the gangrene of plaintiff's leg, and the consequent necessary loss of it, was caused solely by the pricking of the artery and ensuing blood clot, the leg was lost by external, violent, and accidental means. The court further held that there was no evidence that Brand's hernia was "caused or produced by any sickness, or accompanied by any sickness." Plaintiff had a verdict, and defendant took this writ. * * *

Houaii, Circuit Judge (after stating the facts as above). Plain-tiff in error complains that the remark of the trial judge last above quoted gave the jury the impression that hernia is not a disease.

o such inference can be drawn ; it was certainly true that no evidence had been given showing that Brand's hernia made him "sick," and we find no injurious error in the implication suggested. This is because, if we assume that hernia is or may be a disease (again something as to which no satisfactory evidence was given) Brand's hernia was not a cause which produced or contributed to the pricking of his artery, but a condition which exposed him to that possibility. Considering this record, there is no evidence from which any jury could have found as a fact that Brand's hernia caused the pricking of his artery. Such a verdict would have been as far-fetched as to find that, had the ceiling fallen while he lay strapped to the operating table, the hernia that brought him to the table caused or contributed to the injury produced by the falling plaster.

We have no doubt that the bodily injury was effected solely by violent and external means. That the degree of violence is immaterial is fundamental, and even an expected and usual force may be violent enough to injure. * * * The point in this case is whether, on the evidence as established by the verdict, Brand's leg was lost by accidental means, and since the jury has established the causal connection between the pricked artery and the lost leg, the question becomes this: Was the surgeon's puncture accidental?

Every suggested, and we think every conceivable, objection to answering this question in the affirmative, is summed up in the perfectly true statement that the surgeon put his needle just where it ought to have gone, and injury resulted solely because the artery was where it ought not to have been. At least one element of this statement is immaterial, for it plainly makes no difference that the impact or force preceding the injury is designed by the person in-