Both wounds have now healed, but he is unable to raise the right eyelid; the eye is perfect, but apparently without power of vision, though sensible to the stimulus of light, for on turning the wounded side to the light, the left pupil contracts. His general health is good.
R. V. DE LISLE,
Surgeon, 14th King’s Own Regiment.
Camp, Sept. 10.
Private Joseph Bourke, 17th Regiment, admitted on 9th of September, 1855, with fracture of anterior superior angle of right parietal bone, with depression of about one-third of an inch, for the size of a florin. No attempt was made to elevate the depressed portion. Has not had a bad symptom. Wound of scalp nearly healed.
W. P. WARD,
Surgeon, 17th Regiment.
Private Michael Caffrey, 88th Regiment, wounded at the attack upon the Redan on the 8th of September, was brought to the hospital of the 38th Regiment on the morning of the 9th. A round rifle-ball struck him at the anterior part of the left parietal bone, and passed through the brain in a line which brought it out at the vertex, fracturing the parietal bone of the opposite side; the ball at its entrance split, and one-half pushing before it a small piece of bone, both lodged at the entrance; the other half of the ball was found lodged in the brain at the upper and back part, having detached a circular portion of the skull.
A director was passed along the track of the wound, and the scalp laid open; the brain was found to protrude through the fracture. In this condition the patient lived for eleven days, utterly unconscious of everything passing around him, the urine and feces coming away involuntarily. There was paralysis of the opposite side.
A post-mortem examination showed the brain to have been reduced to a pultaceous mass only in the direction of the passage of the missile; the remaining portion of the wounded hemisphere and that of the opposite side were healthy.