COMPARATIVE LESSONS OF BRAIN WOUNDS. 
461 
tumor! Or consult the “ Medical and Surgical History of the 
Civil War,” where in not a single instance—and there are several 
examples given by a surgeon who was “ wise beyond his time”— 
is there an untoward result. 
One word more in connection with this subject. The experi¬ 
ments with intradural inoculation as practiced upon lower verte- 
bratse, has a direct bearing upon the treatment of cranial wounds 
and fractures, and leads me to corroborate a recent assertion of 
JDr. Roberts, of Philadelphia, that trephining is attended with 
trifling risk if carefully performed under antiseptic precautions— 
“ less than the amputation of a digit or removal of a metacarpal 
bone.” The comparative result is three per cent, of futility in 
the former, against four and one-half per cent, for minor ampu¬ 
tations, while the benefits accruing to the trephine are immeas- 
ureably overwhelming! All depressed fractures, all spiculae of 
bone, ail bullets or other foreign substances or their fragments, 
within or upon the brain, are a perpetual menace to life so long 
as they remain. By the trephine epilepsies and choreas of long 
standing have been relieved, oftentimes permanently, one author 
alone claiming a ratio of fifty per ceiit. Insanity has fled before 
the removal of extravasations of blood, evacuations of pus, and ir¬ 
ritation and probable (ultimate) fatal compression avoided. I re¬ 
cently learned also that Drs. Fenger and Lee, of Chicago, aspi¬ 
rated a cerebral abscess by means of a hypodermic syringe with 
the happiest of results. Cerebral localization, yet in its infancy, 
with the drainage tube as an auxiliary, opens up a new era in 
cerebral surgery and pathology, both veterinary and general. 
The opportunities afforded veterinarians for the further develop¬ 
ment of cerebral pathology exceed those of the general practi¬ 
tioner, especially as to its relations to epilepsy, chorea and par¬ 
alysis, for these, despite the amount of literature specially de¬ 
voted thereto, are yet little more than unsolved enigmas. Cere¬ 
bral localization in man and the lower animals is but the key that 
will unlock the mystery now attendant upon diseases of the 
central nervous system, along with their attendant reflex phe¬ 
nomena. 
