zygomatic arches were barely visible from
above, and having entered a drill near the left angle of the inferior
maxilla, he passed it obliquely upward to the median line of the
cranium just in front of the junction of the sagittal and coronal
sutures. This aperture was then enlarged until it allowed the passage
of the bar in question, and the loss of substance strikingly
corresponded with the lesion said to have been received by the patient.
From the coronoid process of the inferior maxilla there was removed a
fragment measuring about 3/4 inch in length. This fragment, in the
patient's case, might have been fractured and subsequently reunited.
The iron bar, together with a cast of the patient's head, was placed in
the Museum of the Massachusetts Medical College.

Bigelow appends an engraving to his paper. In the illustration the
parts are as follows:--

(1) Lateral view of a prepared cranium representing the iron bar
traversing its cavity.

(2) Front view of same.

(3) Plan of the base seen from within. In these three figures the optic
foramina are seen to be intact and are occupied by small white rods.

(4) Cast taken from the shaved head of the patient representing the
appearance of the fracture in 1850, the anterior fragment being
considerably elevated in the profile view.

(5) The iron bar with length and diameter in proportion to the size of
the other figures.

Heaton reports a case in which, by an explosion, a tamping-iron was
driven through the chin of a man into the cerebrum. Although there was
loss of brain-substance, the man recovered with his mental faculties
unimpaired. A second case was that of a man who, during an explosion,
was wounded in the skull. There was visible a triangular depression,
from which, possibly, an ounce of brain-substance issued. This man also
recovered.

Jewett mentions a case in which an injury somewhat similar to that in
Bigelow's case was produced by a gas-pipe.

Among older writers, speaking of loss of brain-substance with
subsequent recovery, Brasavolus saw as much brain evacuated as would
fill an egg shell; the patient afterward had an impediment of speech
and grew stupid. Franciscus Arcaeus gives the narrative of a workman
who was struck on the head by a stone weighing 24 pounds falling from a
height. The skull was fractured; fragments of bone were driven into the
brain. For three days the patient was unconscious and almost lifeless.
After the eighth day a cranial a