“The subject was admitted to Mount Pleasant General Hospital, Washington, D. C., on June 24, with the report that the progress of the case had been so far eminently satisfactory. After admission he was found to be insensible, and a few hours subsequently convulsions supervened in rapidly recurring paroxysms. Twelve ounces of blood were taken from the temporal artery without apparent benefit. A trephine was then applied to the seat of fracture, and upon the removal of a bottom of bone, a portion of the inner table was found slightly depressed. This was elevated, and the patient, soon after, regained consciousness. On the 28th of June, the wound in the scalp became erysipelatous, and before the inflammation subsided there was extensive loss of substance of the integuments and pericranium denuding a large portion of the parietal bone. Necrosis ensued, and embraced the whole thickness of the bone. In September, 1864, a portion of the parietal, three inches by four, had become so much loosened that it was readily removed. After this, cicatrization went on rapidly; and at the date of the last report, December 2, 1864, the wound had contracted to an ulcer less than an inch in diameter. The patient’s mental faculties were impaired somewhat, the ward-physician thought, but not to a great extent.”
This specimen was contributed by Assistant-Surgeon E. A. McCall, United States Army. A colored drawing was made representing the parts prior to the separation of the exfoliation, (No. 74, surgical series of drawings, Surgeon General’s office.)
We see suspended in a case the bone of an arm from the shoulder to the elbow. A musket ball having shattered it, it was necessary to take it out or amputate the arm. The surgeon chose the former. The bone with all its splinters was removed. The photograph of its owner is set up under it, while the living original may come and look at it any moment he chooses, he being one of the attachés to the Museum. He says that he can use the injured arm as readily as the other. The muscles and integuments have taken the place of the lost bone, and are strong enough to enable him to lift a two-hundred-pounds’ weight without difficulty.
Another case of great interest to the medical profession, is that of a soldier of Company C, Eighth New Jersey Volunteers, who was wounded in the battle of the Wilderness, May 5, 1864. The specimen on exhibition is a piece of the hip-bone, about four or five inches long. This shattered bone was excised, May 27, 1864, and the patient was discharged from the hospital, April 17, 1865, perfectly cured, and able to use the mutilated limb without its portion of thigh-bone. In 1868, he was well, could walk without a cane, and was employed as a hod-carrier. He now receives a Government pension of fifteen dollars a month.
At the right of the main entrance, stands the Craniological Cabinet. It contains a thousand or more specimens of the craniæ of different human races. Beside the skull of the Caucasian, we see that of the African, each of the highest order of its kind. The long line contains a “sample” of nearly all the typical heads of the human race.
The collection contains a large number of Indian skulls of opposite tribes, taken from tumuli, and gathered from other sources. There are none to which the scientific man points with more interest, than to the skulls of the Flat-head Indians. These are perfectly flat on the top, forming a right angle with the forehead. Here is the head of a baby, who probably died in the process. Boards are tightly bound to infants’ heads, from birth, till they cease to grow. One would suppose that this would lessen the brain-capacity. But as it can not grow in front, it avenges itself by pushing far out on the sides. Thus the Flat-head Indian’s head is as wide as it is flat, and in defiance of phrenology, he is not only as bright, but brighter in his wits, than many of his neighbors.
Here are Indian arrows, taken from the dead bodies of our soldiers on the plains. The arrowheads are made of barrel-hoops, and so sharp, they can pierce any skull. One is shown, still sticking through a portion of the shoulder-blade of a buffalo. The point of the arrow is outside of the bone, the arrow-tip having passed through the body of the buffalo, and through the bone, opposite the side that it entered. A rifle-ball would be flattened where an Indian arrowhead penetrates without hindrance. The cut of an arrowhead is as clear and clean as if made by the most acute surgical instrument. The fatal force with which an arrow is driven from an Indian bow, is illustrated in the following fact: Here, in the Museum, is the piece of a door of a stage which was attacked by Comanches near Bellos River, Texas, September 1, 1870. The wood, about an inch and a half thick, is pierced by an Indian arrowhead, the point appearing on the outside.
Of the two passengers in the stage at the time of the occurrence, one was killed and the other escaped. The stage guard consisted of three soldiers—one was killed instantly, another escaped, the third was wounded. He received an arrow wound in the head, and three gunshot flesh-wounds, one in the arm, another in the leg and one in the breast. In this condition he travelled one hundred and sixty miles across the plains, on foot. Seven long days it took him to reach the post-hospital at Fort Concho[Concho], Texas. When admitted, mentally, he was clear and bright. But on September 19, he died.
The skull of this unfortunate man, preserved in the Army Museum, shows an arrowhead firmly embedded in the petrous portion of the right temporal bone—a wound in itself, it would seem, sufficient to prove instantly fatal.
One of the pet curiosities of the Museum is a Japanese manikin—ess—we will call it, as it is supposed to represent the creature feminine. The heart is a red apple and the liver (very properly) a yellow one. The stomach looks like a lean pomegranate. The lungs are represented by five green oak leaves. These organs are lumped together, the lungs being below all the rest. The Japanese idea of anatomy seems to be quite as muddled as its powers of perspective.