m 2 1/16 to 6 3/4 inches in length, a fourpenny nail 2 1/4 inches
long, and a needle 1 5/8 inches long. Despite these desperate attempts
at suicide he lived several months, finally accomplishing his purpose
by taking an overdose of morphin. MacQueen has given the history of a
man of thirty-five, who drove one three-inch nail into his forehead,
another close to his occiput, and a third into his vertex an inch in
front and 1/4 inch to the left of the middle line. He had used a hammer
to effect complete penetration, hoping that death would result from his
injuries. He failed in this, as about five weeks later he was
discharged from the Princess Alice Hospital at Eastbourne, perfectly
recovered. There is a record of a man by the name of Bulkley who was
found, by a police officer in Philadelphia, staggering along the
streets, and was taken to the inebriate ward of the Blockley Hospital,
where he subsequently sank and died, after having been transferred from
ward to ward, his symptoms appearing inexplicable. A postmortem
examination revealed the fact that an ordinary knife-blade had been
driven into his brain on the right side, just above the ear, and was
completely hidden by the skin. It had evidently become loosened from
the handle when the patient was stabbed, and had remained in the brain
several days. No clue to the assailant was found.

Thudicum mentions the case of a man who walked from Strafford to
Newcastle, and from Newcastle to London, where he died, and in his
brain was found the breech-pin of a gun. Neiman describes a severe
gunshot wound of the frontal region, in which the iron breech-block of
an old-fashioned muzzle-loading gun was driven into the substance of
the brain, requiring great force for its extraction. The patient, a
young man of twenty-eight, was unconscious but a short time, and
happily made a good recovery. A few pieces of bone came away, and the
wound healed with only a slight depression of the forehead. Wilson
speaks of a child who fell on an upright copper paper-file, which
penetrated the right side of the occipital bone, below the external
orifice of the ear, and entered the brain for more than three inches;
and yet the child made a speedy recovery.

Baron Larrey knew of a man whose head was completely transfixed by a
ramrod, which extended from the middle of the forehead to the left side
of the nape of the neck; despite this serious injury the man lived two
days.

Jewett records the case of