“‘The lips were pale, showing a watery condition of the blood, evinced also by general pallor of the countenance and flabbiness of the solids. The action of the heart and arteries was weak, the pulse being slow and languid. On the surface of the head the integuments showed a slight redness around the cicatrices of the recently healed cuts,--also some morbid sensibility on pressure. Efforts at walking gave a tottering and uncertain gait, as if from partial paralysis (say threatened paraplegia),--the steps being short and unsteady, the muscles evidently not under the complete control of the will, the limbs even giving way partially. The slightest exertion was followed by lassitude quite disproportioned to the efforts. His nights were frequently passed in a state of morbid wakefulness and general uneasiness. The action of the brain was always followed by a sense of weight and dull throbbing pain in the head. This result invariably followed even the slightest mental effort of writing a common letter of business. “‘The entire chain of symptoms soon pointed to the head and spine as the seat of a highly morbid condition. The contents of the other cavities of the body seemed normal. As no regular medical report had been given me of the case before its arrival at the Mountain, its original condition after the assault had to be inferred from present inspection, without the history of its progress. From this it was clearly evident that the brain and spinal cord had been the seat of a grave and, formidable lesion. As the first violent symptoms had passed off, the consequences of which, veiled and obscure, were the only evidence by which the case could be read, it was clearly apparent that its present pathological condition was of a most serious character, and had been preceded by impending danger to life. From all the facts it was evident that from the blows upon the skull there must have been either congestion, or concussion followed by congestion, or positive inflammation of the brain or its investing membranes, in this case. Actual fracture is not at all necessary to this result. In Hope’s Pathological Anatomy we have the following statement: “In several cases of fracture of the skull, and in some of injury of the scalp alone (!), I have found pus, either liquid or of a pasty consistence, between the bone and the dura mater, and adhering to both.” Thus inflammation and its products on the interior of the skull proceed from “_injuries of the scalp alone_.” The injury occurring in a subject of a highly impressible and delicate nervous temperament, at a time in which the central organ of the nervous system was exhausted by excessive mental tension for days and nights of severe effort, carried with it impending destruction. The insidious