Chap, i.] THE SCALP. 3 



area of the scalp (Fig. 1, d). The mobility of the 

 scalp depends entirely upon the laxity of this layer of 

 tissue. In extensive scalp-wounds, when a part of 

 the scalp is separated in the form of a large flap, a 

 flap that may hang down and cover half the face, it 

 is the very looseness of this tissue that permits such 

 separation. In the Indian process of scalping, a 

 taste that is becoming one of the past, the much- 

 prized piece of skin is torn from the skull through 

 this lax area of connective tissue, and, were there no 

 such area, scalping would be an operation requiring 

 some time and art. 



Wounds of the scalp never gape, unless 

 the wound has involved the scalp muscle or its 

 aponeurosis. When this structure has been divided, 

 the lax layer beyond permits of great separation of 

 the edges of even the simplest wound. In uncompli- 

 cated incised wounds, the amount of gaping of the 

 cut depends upon the action of the occipito-frontalis 

 muscle. Those wounds gape the most that are made 

 across the muscle itself, and that are transverse to the 

 direction of its fibres, while those show the least 

 separation that involve the aponeurosis and are made 

 in an antero-posterior direction. The mobility of the 

 scalp is more marked in the young than in the old. 

 A case recorded by Agnew serves in a strange degree 

 to illustrate this fact in the person of an infant. A 

 midwife attending a woman in labour mistook the 

 scalp of the infant for the membranes, and gashed it 

 with a pair of scissors. Labour pains came on and the 

 head was protruded through the scalp wound, so that 

 the whole vault of the skull was peeled like an orange. 

 The scalp being firmly stretched over the hard 

 cranium beneath, it follows that contused wounds 

 often appear as clearly cut as are those that have 

 been made by an incision. Such wounds may be 

 compared to the clean cut that may be made in a kid 



