Page:Recovery from the passage of an iron bar through the head.djvu/17

Rh diameters, with a line of fracture or fissure leading anteriorly through the orbitar plate of the frontal bone, the anterior fossa, and deflecting laterally, towards the median line, divides the left frontal sinus, at the supra-orbitar notch, and ascends the forehead along the left margin of the ridge, for the attachment of the falx major. Inferiorly the line of separation begins at the infra-orbitar foramen and the malar process of the supra-maxillary from the body of the bone, terminating at a point upon the superior maxillary opposite the last molar tooth.–The bones implicated in its passage were the superior maxillary, malar, sphenoid, and frontal. The iron, as you will perceive, entered the left cerebrum at the fissure of Sylvius, possibly puncturing the cornu of the left lateral ventricle, and in its passage and exit must have produced serious lesion of the cerebrum–disintegrating and pulpifying it, drawing out a considerable quantity of it at the opening in the top of the head, and lacerating unquestionably the upper aspect of the falx major and the superior longitudinal sinus. As the iron emerged from the head, it comminuted the central portion of the frontal bone, leaving an irregular oblong opening in the bone of three and one-half inches in its antero-posterior, by two inches in its lateral diameter. Two of these fragments, as you will see from the specimens before you, were re-united. 3