COMPARATIVE LESSONS OF BRAIN WOUNDS. 
303 
processes worthy of imitation and fostering, such were only 
“ wonderful” cr “ phenomenal.” No conclusions were offered or 
drawn ; the lessons inculcated by Nature were ignored, and all 
bowed down to the miraculous, forgetting the teachings of the 
Greek school —Thaumata moris — u Miracles for fools” ; and at 
last, when a few bolder spirits ventured to suggest that the ner¬ 
vous system might be equall} 7 tolerant with other tissues and or¬ 
gans, and that within itself was contained the same means of 
reparation and reconstruction, they were derided and laughed to 
scorn. Happily common sense is at last in the ascendant, and it 
is safe to predict that the day is not distant when the brain will 
be as freely amenable to surgical procedures as the organs of the 
abdomen. 
Before the brain can become the seat of traumatic injury, its 
protecting walls must be penetrated, and accordingly we find 
three phases of fracture: of the base, of the vault, or of both. 
By authors and teachers the first and last are held “ invariably 
and necessarily fatal” ; this is the testimony of Ericlisen, Wood, 
Cooper, Neudorfen and hosts of others, and is the more remark¬ 
able in that such premises have been practically disproven. 
There is scarce a well-appointed anatomical museum in the United 
Kingdom or in the United States that does not present crania ex¬ 
hibiting repaired basal fracture that occurred months and even 
years prior to demise, and that too (in the few instances where 
the history could be traced) with so little influence upon life and 
function as to pass wholly unrecognized. Farther than this, the 
subject of basal fracture does not invite attention in this connec¬ 
tion. 
Again, fracture may involve the outer, the inner, or both 
tables. 
The first, as a special lesion, does not invite comment, since its 
relations to brain injury are merely secondary. The two latter, 
while demanding the closest attention, may, for all practical pur¬ 
poses, be held identical, the results, and even the treatment, being 
the same. 
Fractures involving the inner (or inner and outer) table, al¬ 
most invariably are attended with extravasation of sanguinous 
