Barnaby True was too full of his own thoughts to talk (and serious enough thoughts they were by this time, with crimps to trepan a man at every turn, and press-gangs to carry him off so that he might never be heard of again).

He trepanned a portion of the skull around the old wound and actually found a bone splinter lodged in the man's brain.

Not until 1908 was the problem solved by Paulesco of Bucharest, who devised a way of reaching it by trepanning the skull.