only one so terminating with which I have met:—On the 4th September,
I was consulted by a gentleman, aged 35, who had received a punctured
fracture of the cranium, on the 29th of August; a heavy dung fork had
fallen from the top of a haystack, and struck him on the upper part of
the head. Immediately after the accident he became confused, but not
insensible; he lost the power of motion in the right lower extremity,
but almost instantly regained it. Next day the right arm became weak,
and when I saw him, he was almost wholly unable to move it: he could
not bend his fingers, nor raise the arm, and he retained the power of
exercising but very slight motion in the elbow-joint. There was a small
wound of the scalp, nearly healed, over the posterior part of the left
parietal bone, close to the sagittal suture, and nearly midway between
its two extremities. A probe passed down to, and through, the bone;
and there was slight swelling of the scalp around the wound. He had
felt pain in the right ear, and in the forehead, whilst stooping, for
some days after the accident. No blood had ever escaped from the ear. A
fit of shivering occurred on the night following the injury, but never
returned. He soon recovered completely.
I subjoin a case of an opposite description. A coachman was knocked
down, late on a Saturday night, and fell with his head on the corner
of a stone on which masons had been recently working. After being
carried to his lodgings, he recovered from the stupor produced by the
combined causes of liquor and blows; and next morning he went to have
his head dressed by an apothecary, who with difficulty extracted a
fragment of the stone from the wound of the head. The patient then
drove a party to church, and probably drank some more whiskey during
the day. He afterwards felt indisposed, and was seized with sickness
and shivering in the afternoon. On Monday he was in a violent fever,
and I saw him in the evening. He had been delirious, but was now lying
in a state of stupor. There was a hole in the right parietal bone,
capable of admitting the point of the little finger, and many loose
fragments of bone were felt lying on the dura mater; a trephine was
applied, and numerous spicula were removed. Afterwards, the circulation
became much excited, he was bled copiously, and antimony was exhibited
in nauseating doses; but he died early on Wednesday morning. On
dissection, there were found marks of violent inflammatory action on
the surface of the hemispheres. The vessels were unusually numerous
and highly engorged, and lymph and pus were effused in considerable
quantity, the arachnoid was opaque, and the cerebral substance was
somewhat softened. Had the operation been performed at an earlier
period, there is every probability that the inflammation, which proved
fatal, would have been averted, as in the following instance:—A
quarryman received a blow from a sharp stone of considerable size,
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