Page:Recovery from the passage of an iron bar through the head.djvu/5

Rh a few feet behind him, loading rock upon a platform car, with a derrick. The powder and fuse had been adjusted in the hole, and he was in the act of "tamping it in," as it is called, previous to pouring in the sand. While doing this, his attention was attracted by his men in the pit behind him. Averting his head and looking over his right shoulder, at the same instant dropping the iron upon the charge, it struck fire upon the rock, and the explosion followed, which projected the iron obliquely upwards, in a line of its axis, passing completely through his head, and high into the air, falling to the ground several rods behind him, where it was afterwards picked up by his men, smeared with blood and brain. The missile entered by its pointed end, the left side of the face, immediately anterior to the angle of the lower jaw, and passing obliquely upwards, and obliquely backwards, emerged in the median line, at the back part of the frontal bone, near the coronal suture. The wound thus occasioned will be demonstrated and fully described to you hereafter. The iron which thus traversed the head, is known with blasters as a "tamping iron," is round and rendered comparatively smooth by use, and is three feet seven inches in length, one and one-fourth inches in its largest diameter, and weighs thirteen and one-fourth pounds. The end which entered first is pointed, the taper being about twelve inches long, and the diameter of the point one-fourth of an inch.

The patient was thrown upon his back by the explosion, and gave a few convulsive motions of the extremities, but spoke in a few minutes. His men (with whom he was a great favorite) took him in their arms and carried him to the road, only a few rods distant, and put him into an ox cart, in which he rode, supported in a sitting posture, fully three-quarters of a mile to his hotel. He got out of the cart himself, with a little assistance from his men, and an hour