Note 816 — ON INJURIES OF THE HEAD.

The following sentence, taken from Sir Charles Bell’s description of the operation, looks like a translation of this passage of Hippocrates; but it is well known that our English surgeon was not guilty of reading Greek! “Withdraw your trephine from time to time, brush it, and run the flat probe round the circular cut.” The specillum of the ancient surgeons was, in most respects, not unlike our modern probe.