Part 19
When a person has sustained a mortal wound on the head, which cannot
be cured, nor his life preserved, you may form an opinion of his approaching
dissolution, and foretell what is to happen from the following symptoms
which such a person experiences. When a bone is broken, or cleft,
or contused, or otherwise injured, and when by mistake it has not
been discovered, and neither the raspatory nor trepan has been applied
as required, but the case has been neglected as if the bone were sound,
fever will generally come on if in winter, and in summer the fever
usually seizes after seven days. And when this happens, the wound
loses its color, and the inflammation dies in it; and it becomes glutinous,
and appears like a pickle, being of a tawny and somewhat livid color;
and the bone then begins to sphacelate, and turns black where it was
white before, and at last becomes pale and blanched. But when suppuration
is fairly established in it, small blisters form on the tongue and
he dies delirious. And, for the most part,
[p. 158]convulsions seize the other
side of the body; for, if the wound be situated on the left side,
the convulsions will seize the right side of the body; or if the wound
be on the right side of the head, the convulsion attacks the left
side of the body. And some become apoplectic. And thus they die before
the end of seven days, if in summer; and before fourteen, if in winter.
And these symptoms indicate, in the same manner, whether the wound
be older or more recent. But if you perceive that fever is coming
on, and that any of these symptoms accompany it, you must not put
off, but having sawed the bone to the membrane (
meninx), or scraped
it with a raspatory (and it is then easily sawed or scraped), you
must apply the other treatment as may seem proper, attention being
paid to circumstances.