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 abscess 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.
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