90 The Wild Elephant. 



NOTE. 



Amongst extraordinary recoveries from desperate wounds^ I 

 venture to record here an instance which occurred in Ceylon 

 to a gentleman while engaged in the chase of elephants, and 

 which, I apprehend, has few parallels in pathological experi- 

 ence. Lieutenant Gerard Fretz. of the Ceylon Rifle 

 Regiment, whilst firing at an elephant in the vicinity of Fort 

 MacDonald, in Ouvah, was wounded in the face by the 

 bursting of his fowling-piece, on the 22nd January, 1828. He 

 was then about thirty-two years of age. On raising him, it 

 was found that part of the breech of the gun and about two 

 inches of the barrel had been driven through the frontal sinus 

 at the junction of the nose and forehead. It had sunk almost 

 perpendicularly till the iron plate called "the tail-pin," by 

 which the barrel is made fast to the stock by a screw, had 

 descended through the palate, carrying with it the screw, one 

 extremity of which had forced itself into the right nostril, 

 where it was discernible externally, whilst the headed end 

 lay in contact with his tongue. To extract the jagged mass 

 of iron thus sunk in the ethmoidal and sphenoidal cells was 

 found hopelessly impracticable ; but strange to tell, after the 

 inflammation subsided, Mr. Fretz recovered rapidly ; his 

 general health was unimpaired, and he returned to his regi- 

 ment with this singular appendage firmly embedded behind 

 the bones of his face. He took his turn of duty as usual, 

 attained the command of his company, participated in all the 



