culate sounds,
but made himself understood through the intervention of this plate,
which was fixed to a silver chin. The chin he used to maintain the
tongue-plate, to diminish the deformity, and to retain the saliva,
which was constantly dribbling on the neck. The same author quotes the
instance of a man of fifty, who, during the siege of Alexandria in
1801, was struck in the middle of his face, obliquely, by a cannonball,
from below upward and from right to left. A part of the right malar
bone, the two superior maxillary bones, the nasal bones, the cartilage,
the vomer, the middle lamina of the ethmoid, the left maxillary bone, a
portion of the left zygomatic arch, and a great portion of the inferior
maxilla were carried away, or comminuted, and all the soft parts
correspondingly lacerated. Several hours afterward this soldier was
counted among the number of dead, but Larrey, the surgeon-in-chief of
the army, with his typical vigilance and humanity, remarked that the
patient gave signs of life, and that, despite the magnitude of his
wound, he did not despair of his recovery. Those portions in which
attrition was very great were removed, and the splinters of bone taken
out, showing an enormous wound. Three months were necessary for
cicatrization, but it was not until the capitulation of Marabou, at
which place he was wounded, that the patient was returned to France. At
this time he presented a hideous aspect. There were no signs of nose,
nor cartilage separating the entrance of the nostrils, and the vault of
the nasal fossa could be easily seen. There was a part of the posterior
region of the right superior maxilla, but the left was entirely
gone--in fact, the man presented an enormous triangular opening in the
center of the face, as shown by the accompanying illustration. The
tongue and larynx were severely involved, and the sight in the left eye
was lost. This patient continually wore a gilded silver mask, which
covered his deformity and rendered articulation a little less
difficult. The saliva continually dribbled from the mouth and from the
inferior internal portion of his mask, compelling him to carry some
substance to receive the dribblings. Whymper mentions an analogous
instance of a gunner who had his whole lower jaw torn away by a shell,
but who recovered and used an ingenious contrivance in the shape of a
silver mask for remedying the loss of the parts. Steiner mentions a
wound from a cannon-ball, which carried