There is also an old record of a ball lodging near the sella turcica for over a year, the patient dying suddenly of an entirely different accident.
Fabricius Hildanus relates the history of an injury, in which, without causing any uncomfortable symptoms, a ball rested between the skull and dura for six months.
Amatus Lusitanus speaks of a drunken courtesan who was wounded in a fray with a long, sharp-pointed knife which was driven into the head.
No apparent injury resulted, and death from fever took place eight years after the reception of the injury.

On opening the head a large piece of knife was found between the skull and dura.

It is said that Benedictus mentions a Greek who was wounded, at the siege of Colchis, in the right temple by a dart and taken captive by the Turks; he lived for twenty years in slavery, the wound having completely healed.
Obtaining his liberty, he came to Sidon, and five years after, as he was washing his face, he was seized by a violent fit of sneezing, and discharged from one of his nostrils a piece of the dart having an iron point of considerable length.
In about 1884 there died in the Vienna Hospital a bookbinder of forty-five, who had always passed as an intelligent man, but who had at irregular intervals suffered from epileptic convulsions.

An iron nail covered with rust was discovered in his brain; from the history of his life and from the appearances of the nail it had evidently been lodged in the cerebrum since childhood.
Slee mentions a case in which, after the death of a man from septic peritonitis following a bullet-wound of the intestines, he found postmortem a knife-blade 5/16 inch in width projecting into the brain to the depth of one inch.

The blade was ensheathed in a strong fibrous capsule 1/2 inch thick, and the adjacent brain-structure was apparently normal.