Sir Everard Holme’s Observations 
482 
the person wished to articulate, using others in their place, 
although conscious of doing so, and unable to correct it. 
Numbness in the arms and legs. These effects ceased on 
taking off the pressure.* On the anterior lobes of the brain, 
both anteriorly and laterally, with thickening of the pia mater, 
spasms in the lower extremities, and total loss of memory, 
so that the person did not know what he had done a few 
hours before : although in other respects in health.')' On the 
lower and lateral portions of the anterior and middle lobes of 
the brain, head-aches, general wasting, irregularity in the 
action of the bowels ; the feel of inability to swallow, and 
great distress in the act of swallowing, with great general 
irritability. J 
* A gentleman fractured his skull, and remained fifteen minutes insensible ; be- 
came sensible but could not speak for seven days : for twenty eight days could not 
speak distinctly, and used one word for another. In six weeks he was considered 
well with a depression of the lower posterior part of the left parietal bone, two and a 
half inches long, one and a half broad, and three quarters deep, which was removed 
at the end of three years, the increase of symptoms making it necessary ; they all 
went off. 
t The frontal bone and the parietal ones were one third of an inch thick. There 
was an ossification in the falx of the dura mater near the crista galli, one inch and a 
half long, three quarters broad; another near the tentorium three quarters of an 
inch long, half an inch broad, and three quarters thick. The tunica arachnoides and 
pia mater thicker than the dura mater. The processes of the pia mater firm ; the 
smaller arteries in the medullary substance carried red blood. Two ounces of water 
in the ventricles. The person had been thirty-five years in India. 
J On the basis of the skull were numerous small exostoses, particularly from the 
lower portion of the parietal bones, some longer than others and sharp at the point ; 
the longest, one third of an inch. 
1 
