sun, and had no other application than water–dressing. Of eight cases of contusion or fracture of the cranium, with displacement of both tables, recorded by Dr. Williamson, among men who were sent from India to Chatham, during the late mutiny, none had been trephined. In all these there was a depressed cicatrix, the wound having contracted and become closed by a strong fibrous investment. In one case—a wound by a musket–ball, in the center of the forehead—the ball was supposed to be still lodged within the skull. In the Fort Pitt museum are several preparations, showing depressed fracture of the inner table of the skull from gunshot, taken from patients who had recovered without trephining, and died years afterward from other causes. The edges of the depressed portions of bone had become smooth, and united by new osseous matter, and the cerebrum must have accommodated itself to the new form of the inner cranial surface. Two or three instances are known in which the course of a ball has been traced from the sight of entrance across the brain, and trephining resorted to for its extraction, with success; but there are also many others in which the mere operation of the extraction of a foreign body has apparently led to the immediate occurrence of fatal results. Moreover, splinters of bone are not unfrequently carried into the brain by balls, and these may elude observation; or the ball itself may be divided and enter the brain in different directions, as was observed in the Crimea; when the operation of trephining can only be an additional complication to the original injury, without any probable advantage. Where irregular edges, points, or pieces of bone are forced down and penetrate—not merely press upon—the cerebral substance, or where abscess manifestly exists in any known site, or a foreign substance has lodged near the surface, and relief cannot be afforded by the wound, trephining may be resorted to for the purpose; but the application of the operation, even in these cases, will be very much limited if certainty of diagnosis be insisted upon. In all other cases, it seems now generally admitted that much harm will be avoided, and benefit more probably effected, by employing long–continued constitutional treatment, viz., all the means necessary for controlling and preventing the diffusion of inflammation over the surface of the brain and its membranes,—the most careful regimen, very spare diet, strict rest, calomel and antimonials, occasional purgatives, cold application locally, so applied as to exclude the air from the wound, and free depletion by venesection, in case of inflammatory symptoms arising. Similar remarks will apply in case of lodgment of a projectile within the brain; if the site of its lodgment is obvious, it should be removed with as little disturbance as possible, but trephining for its extraction on simple inference is unwarrantable. GUNSHOT WOUNDS OF THE SPINE.