_Wounds of the Head._--10. The physician should, first of all, before touching the patient’s head, inspect carefully the wound and surrounding parts. After noting whether the injury has been inflicted upon a strong or a weak portion of the head, he should ascertain whether the hair has been cut by the fall or the blow, and whether portions of it have penetrated into the wound. In the latter event he should express his fear that the skull at this point has been laid bare and has perhaps even received some material injury. He should make this statement before he has touched or probed the wound. Then afterward he should proceed to a physical examination of the injured parts, in order that he may learn positively whether the overlying soft tissues have or have not been separated from the bone. If simple inspection reveals the fact that the skull has been laid bare, well and good; but, if the real condition is not thus revealed, he should not hesitate to employ the probe. If he finds that the soft parts have been separated from the bone and that the latter has been more or less injured, he should continue this more minute exploration until he shall have ascertained to just what extent and in what manner the skull has been injured, and what measures are required to remedy the damage; in brief, he should make the diagnosis. At the same time, however, he should not neglect to question the patient very closely about the manner in which the wound was inflicted, for in this way he may be able to infer the existence of a contusion, or even a fracture of the skull, of which no material evidences are discoverable. Important information may also be gathered by passing the hand over the seat of injury in the bone,--information which the employment of the probe is not competent to convey. [Twenty-one additional chapters are devoted to wounds of the head, every possible phase of the subject being handled by Hippocrates in the most careful and thorough manner.] CHAPTER IX THE STATE OF GREEK MEDICINE AFTER THE EVENTS OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR; THE FOUNDING OF ALEXANDRIA IN EGYPT, AT THE MOUTH OF THE NILE; AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF DIFFERENT SECTS IN MEDICINE Up to the time when war broke out between Sparta and Athens (431 B. C.), the latter city had for many years easily held the supremacy, not merely in everything relating to the science and art of medicine, but also in all other branches of learning and especially in the arts of sculpture, painting and architecture. At the time named above came the beginning of her downfall. For a period of about twenty-one years she struggled against disasters of all sorts.