Afterward he became noisy, self-asserting, sharp, and seemingly devoid of moral sense or honesty. These new traits developed immediately, and more strikingly so soon as convalescence was established.
Bergtold quotes a case reported in 1857 of extreme injury to the cranium and its contents. While sleeping on the deck of a canal boat, a man at Highspire was seriously injured by striking his head against a bridge. When seen by the surgeon his hair was matted and his clothes saturated with blood. There was a terrible gap in the scalp from the superciliary ridge to the occipital bone, and, though full of clots, the wound was still oozing. In a cloth on a bench opposite were rolled up a portion of the malar bone, some fragments of the os frontis, one entire right parietal bone, detached from its fellow along the sagittel suture, and from the occipital along the lambdoidal suture, perhaps taking with it some of the occipital bone together with some of the squamous portion of the temporal bone. This bone was as clean of soft parts as if it had been removed from a dead subject with a scalpel and saw. No sight of the membranes or of the substance of the brain was obtained. The piece of cranium removed was 6 3/4inches in the longitudinal diameter, and 5 3/4 inches in the short oval diameter. The dressing occupied an hour, at the end of which the patient arose to his feet and changed his clothes as though nothing had happened. Twenty-six years after the accident there was slight unsteadiness of gait, and gradual paralysis of the left leg and arm and the opposite side of the face, but otherwise the man was in good condition. In place of the parietal bone the head presented a marked deficiency as though a slice of the skull were cut out. The depressed area measured five by six inches. In 1887 the man left the hospital in Buffalo with the paralysis improved, but his mental equilibrium could be easily disturbed. He became hysteric and sobbed when scolded.
Buchanan mentions the history of a case in a woman of twenty-one, who, while working in a mill, was struck by a bolt. Her skull was fractured and driven into the brain comminuted. Hanging from the wound was a bit of brain-substance, the size of a finger, composed of convolution as well as white matter. The wound healed, there was no hernia, and at the time of report the girl was conscious of no disturbance, not even a headache. There was nothing indicative of the reception of the injury except a scar near the edge of the hair on the upper part of the right side of the forehead. Steele, in a school-boy of eight, mentions a case of very severe injury to the bones of the face and head, with escape of cerebral substance, and recovery. The injury was caused by falling into machinery.
There was a seaman aboard of the U.S.S. "Constellation," who fell through a hatchway from the masthead, landing on the vertex of the head. There was copious bleeding from the ears, 50 to 60fluid-ounces of blood oozing in a few hours, mingled with small fragments of brain-tissue. The next day the discharge became watery, and in it were found small pieces of true brain-substance. In five weeks the man returned to duty complaining only of giddiness and of a "stuffed-up" head. In 1846there is a record of a man of forty who fell from a scaffold, erected at a height of 20 feet, striking on his head. He was at first stunned, but on admission to the hospital recovered consciousness. A small wound was found over the right eyebrow, protruding from which was a portion of brain-substance. There was slight hemorrhage from the right nostril, and some pain in the head, but the pulse and respiration were undisturbed. On the following day a fragment of the cerebral substance, about the size of a hazel-nut, together with some brood-clots, escaped from the right nostril. In this case the inner wall of the frontal sinus was broken, affording exit for the lacerated brain.
Cooke and Laycock mention a case of intracranial injury with extensive destruction of brain-substance around the Rolandic area; there was recovery but with loss of the so called muscular sense. The patient, a workman of twenty-nine, while cutting down a gum-tree, was struck by a branch as thick as a man's arm, which fell from 100 feet overhead, inflicting a compound comminuted fracture of the cranium. The right eye was contused but the pupils equal; the vertex-wound was full of brain-substance and pieces of bone, ten of which were removed, leaving an oval opening four by three inches. The base of the skull was fractured behind the orbits; a fissure 1/4 inch wide was discernible, and the right frontal bone could be easily moved. The lacerated and contused brain-substance was removed. Consciousness returned six days after the operation. The accompanying illustrations (Figs.
196 and 197) show the extent of the injury. The lower half of the ascending frontal convolution, the greater half of the sigmoid gyrus, the posterior third of the lower and middle frontal convolutions, the base and posterior end of the upper convolution, and the base of the corresponding portion of the falciform lobe were involved. The sensory and motor functions of the arm were retained in a relative degree. There was power of ****** movements, but complex movements were awkward. The tactile localization was almost lost.
