bscess spontaneously opened, from the
sinciput to the occiput, and a large quantity of "corruption" was
evacuated. Speech returned soon after, the eyes opened, and in twenty
days the man could distinguish objects. In four months recovery was
entire. Bontius relates a singular accident to a sailor, whose head was
crushed between a ship and a small boat; the greater part of the
occipital bone was taken away in fragments, the injury extending almost
to the foremen magnum. Bontius asserts that the patient was perfectly
cured by another surgeon and himself. Galen mentions an injury to a
youth in Smyrna, in whom the brain was so seriously wounded that the
anterior ventricles were opened; and vet the patient recovered.
Glandorp mentions a case of fracture of the skull out of which his
father took large portions of brain and some fragments of bone. He adds
that the man was afterward paralyzed an the opposite side and became
singularly irritable. In his "Chirurgical Observations," Job van
Meek'ren tells the story of a Russian nobleman who lost part of his
skull, and a dog's skull was supplied in its place. The bigoted divines
of the country excommunicated the man, and would not annul his sentence
until he submitted to have the bit of foreign bone removed.

Mendenhall reports the history of an injury to a laborer nineteen years
old. While sitting on a log a few feet from a comrade who was chopping
wood, the axe glanced and, slipping from the woodman's grasp, struck
him just above the ear, burying the "bit" of the axe in his skull. Two
hours afterward he was seen almost pulseless, and his clothing drenched
with blood which was still oozing from the wound with mixed
brain-substance and fragments of bone. The cut was horizontal on a
level with the orbit, 5 1/2 inches long externally, and, owing to the
convex shape of the axe, a little less internally. Small spicules of
bone were removed, and a cloth was placed on the battered skull to
receive the discharges for the inspection of the surgeon, who on his
arrival saw at least two tablespoonfuls of cerebral substance on this
cloth. Contrary to all expectation this man recovered, but, strangely,
he had a marked and peculiar change of voice, and this was permanent.
From the time of the reception of the injury his whole mental and moral
nature had undergone a pronounced change. Before the injury, the
patient was considered a quiet, unassuming, and stupid boy, but
universally regarded as