The lieutenant immediately asked how his patient did. But he
resolved him only by saying, "Better, I believe, than he would have
been by this time, if I had not been called; and even as it is,
perhaps it would have been lucky if I could have been called
sooner."- "I hope, sir," said the lieutenant, "the skull is not
fractured."- "Hum," cries the surgeon: "fractures are not always the
most dangerous symptoms. Contusions and lacerations are often attended
with worse phaenomena, and with more fatal consequences, than
fractures. People who know nothing of the matter conclude, if the
skull is not fractured, all is well; whereas, I had rather see a man's
skull broke all to pieces, than some contusions I have met with."- "I
hope," says the lieutenant, "there are no such symptoms here."-
"Symptoms," answered the surgeon, "are not always regular nor
constant. I have known very unfavourable symptoms in the morning
change to favourable ones at noon, and return to unfavourable again at
night. Of wounds, indeed, it is rightly and truly said, Nemo repente
fuit turpissimus.* I was once, I remember, called to a patient who had
received a violent contusion in his tibia, by which the exterior cutis
was lacerated, so that there was a profuse sanguinary discharge; and
the interior membranes were so divellicated, that the os or bone
very plainly appeared through the aperture of the vulnus or wound.
Some febrile symptoms intervening at the same time (for the pulse
was exuberant and indicated much phlebotomy), I apprehended an
immediate mortification.
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