"After a period varying from one to three weeks, the pulse improves in tone, the temperature of the body increases, the tendency to flexion subsides, and the patient lies stretched out. Irritability gives place to fatuity; there is less manifestation of temper, but more weakness of mind. Recovery is slow, but though delayed, may at length be perfect...." The _treatment_ consists in keeping the patient quiet, in a darkened room, on much the same lines as for concussion. #Compression of the Brain.#--This term is used clinically to denote the train of symptoms which follows a marked increase of the intra-cranial tension produced by such causes as hæmorrhage, œdema, the accumulation of inflammatory exudate, or the growth of tumours within the skull. The only pathological idea the term conveys is that there is more inside the skull than it can conveniently hold. _Clinical Features._--The following description refers to compression due to hæmorrhage within the skull as a result of injury. In a majority of such cases, the symptoms of compression supervene on those of concussion; in certain conditions, notably hæmorrhage from the middle meningeal artery, there is an interval, during which the patient regains complete consciousness, in others the symptoms of concussion gradually and imperceptibly merge into those of compression. The rapidity of onset of the symptoms and their course and duration vary widely according to the nature and extent of the brain lesion. Death may occur in a few hours, or recovery may take place after the patient has been unconscious for several weeks. The first symptoms are of an irritative character--dull pain in the head, restlessness, and hyper-sensitiveness to external stimuli. The face is suffused, and the pupils at first are usually contracted. The temperature falls to 97°, or even to 95° F. Vomiting is not infrequent. As the pressure increases, paralytic symptoms ensue. The patient gradually loses consciousness, and passes into a condition of coma. The face is cyanosed, and the distension of the veins of the eyelids furnishes an index of the severity of the intra-cranial venous stasis (Cushing). The pulse becomes slow, full, and bounding. The respiration is slow and deep, and eventually stertorous or snoring in character from paralysis of the soft palate, and the lips and cheeks are puffed out from paralysis of the muscles of these parts. The temperature, which at first falls to 97° or even 95° F., in the course of three or four hours usually rises (100.5° or 102.5° F.). If the temperature reaches 104° F., or higher, the condition usually proves fatal. Sometimes it rises as high as 106° or 108° F.--_cerebral hyperpyrexia_ (Fig. 185). Retention of urine from paralysis of the bladder, and involuntary defecation from paralysis of the sphincter ani, are common. [Illustration: FIG. 185.--Two Charts of Pyrexia in Head Injuries.]