His left eyelid was involuntarily closed and he had no power to overcome his ptosis.

Upon the head, well covered by the hair, was a large unequal depression and elevation.

In order to ascertain how far it might be possible for a bar of the size causing the injury to traverse the skull in the track assigned to it, Bigelow procured a common skull in which the zygomatic arches were barely visible from above, and having entered a drill near the left angle of the inferior maxilla, he passed it obliquely upward to the median line of the cranium just in front of the junction of the sagittal and coronal sutures.

This aperture was then enlarged until it allowed the passage of the bar in question, and the loss of substance strikingly corresponded with the lesion said to have been received by the patient.
From the coronoid process of the inferior maxilla there was removed a fragment measuring about 3/4 inch in length.

This fragment, in the patient's case, might have been fractured and subsequently reunited.
The iron bar, together with a cast of the patient's head, was placed in the Museum of the Massachusetts Medical College.
Bigelow appends an engraving to his paper.