ld not permit of any other
treatment than a corrosive-sublimate compress and a bandage of
Scultetus. She was taken to the hospital ward, where warmth and
stimulants were applied, after which she completely reacted. She
progressed so well that it was not deemed advisable to remove the
head-bandage until the fourth day, when it was seen that the wounds had
almost entirely healed and suppuration was virtually absent. The
patient rapidly and completely recovered, and her neighbors, on her
return home, could hardly believe that she was the same woman whom, a
few days before, they were preparing to take to the morgue.

A serious injury, which is not at all infrequent, is that caused by
diving into shallow water, or into a bath from which water has been
withdrawn. Curran mentions a British officer in India who, being
overheated, stopped at a station bath in which the previous night he
had had a plunge, and without examining, took a violent "header" into
the tank, confidently expecting to strike from eight to ten feet of
water. He dashed his head against the concrete bottom 12 feet below
(the water two hours previously having been withdrawn) and crushed his
brain and skull into an indistinguishable mass.

There are many cases on record in which an injury, particularly a
gunshot wound of the skull, though showing no external wound, has
caused death by producing a fracture of the internal table of the
cranium. Pare gives details of the case of a nobleman whose head was
guarded by a helmet and who was struck by a ball, leaving no external
sign of injury, but it was subsequently found that there was an
internal fracture of the cranium. Tulpius and Scultetus are among the
older writers reporting somewhat similar instances, and there are
several analogous cases reported as having occurred during the War of
the Rebellion. Boling reports a case in which the internal table was
splintered to a much greater extent than the external.

Fracture of the base of the skull is ordinarily spoken of as a fatal
injury, reported instances of recovery being extremely rare, but
Battle, in a paper on this subject, has collected numerous statistics
of nonfatal fracture of the base of the brain, viz.:--

Male. Female.
Anterior fossa, . . . . . . . . . . . 16 5
Middle fossa, . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 6
Posterior fossa,. . . . . . . . . . . 10 1
Middle and anterior fossae, . . . . .