GUNSHOT WOUNDS.

Gunshot wounds consist of injuries from missiles projected by the force of explosion. As the name implies, this class of wounds is ordinarily restricted to injuries resulting from fire-arms; but it should be remembered that wounds possessing the same leading characteristics may result from objects impelled by any sudden expansive force of sufficient violence. Injuries from stones, in the process of blasting rocks, or from fragments of close vessels burst asunder by the elastic power of steam, offer familiar examples of wounds of a like nature with those from gunshot. In the following article, however, gunshot wounds will be considered as they are met with in the operations of warfare.

HISTORY.

From the earliest time of the application of gunpowder to implements of war, down to the present day, the wounds inflicted by its means have excited the most marked interest among surgeons; nor can this be wondered at, when the immensely superior energy of this agent in comparison with all the mechanical powers previously in use for hostile purposes, and the terrible nature of its effects on the human frame, are remembered. By its introduction the whole aspect of war was changed, in a great degree, by the distance at which opposing forces were enabled to contend with each other; just as, in our day, the nature of battle seems destined to undergo another change from the increased range and precision of fire obtained through the general use of rifled weapons. But though the alterations now being made in the qualities of fire-arms are of the utmost importance to those whose business and especial study is the art of war, to the army surgeon the interest they excite is chiefly limited to the degree of injury and destruction inflicted by them as compared with weapons of a less perfect kind; while to the surgeons employed at the time of the introduction of gunpowder, the wounds were wholly new in their nature as well as degree. Recollecting the ignorance which then prevailed in all departments of science and art, it can excite no surprise that the new engines of war, with the flame and noise accompanying their discharge, were regarded with superstitious terror; nor that surgeons for a long time found an explanation of the sloughing severity of the injuries they inflicted, and of their difficult cure, in the poisonous nature of gunpowder, or of the projectiles which had been acted upon by it, or in the burning effects of these latter from heat acquired in their rapid flight through the air. Unfortunately, these erroneous views did not end with the theories from which they started, but led to treatment which only aggravated the evils inflicted by the new weapons, and interrupted the progress of the healing action, which nature would otherwise have established. The wound being regarded as a poisoned wound, it was only by a long and tedious process of suppuration that the poison could be hoped to be got rid of from the surface, and prevented from entering the system of the patient. The irritative fever, the wasting and emaciation, and all the other results of the protracted cure of the injury were so many evidences of the indirect effect of the poison working in the frame; just as the constitutional shock at the time of the wound, the loss of vitality along the surface in the track of a small projectile, or of the tissues laid bare by the passage of the cannon-ball were regarded as evidences of its direct influence. On looking back at the works of successive writers on this class of injuries, the reader is surprised that the improvement in their treatment has been so gradual and slow; and cannot fail to observe that the chief impediment to a more rapid amelioration of the system pursued has been the prevailing idea of the necessity of delaying the tendency of nature to close the wound, in order that the supposed poison might be eliminated from the constitution. The openings of entrance and exit and track of the ball were incised; the wound dilated by tents or other means, and terebinthinates, or even boiling oil, poured into it; irritating compounds and ointments applied where superficial dressings were practicable; and it was only after the wound was considered to be fully purged of its venom and foul humors by the extensive suppurative action thus kept up, that cicatrization was permitted to be established.

It required long years of observation in many conflicts, and the exercise of much industry, not to mention moral courage in opposing authorized custom and prejudice, before a simpler and more rational mode of practice was followed. It is satisfactory to know that though Continental surgeons have written more voluminously on the subject of gunshot wounds, the older English military surgeons and writers stand forth conspicuously in leading the way to a more practical knowledge of their nature and proper treatment.

Although, however, much that was erroneous was removed by the earlier surgeons, the light of science can hardly be said to have penetrated this important province of military surgery until the great and last work of John Hunter, on the Blood, Inflammation, and Gunshot Wounds, was published in 1794. This distinguished philosopher filled some of the highest positions in the British service, having been appointed in 1776 Surgeon Extraordinary to the Army, in 1786 Deputy Surgeon-General, and subsequently Surgeon-General; but he only served abroad about three years, and then only had the opportunity of seeing active service as staff-surgeon in the expedition to Belleisle. Had the field of his practical observation been more extensive, there can be no doubt that his zealous and scientific mind would have turned the advantage to the most valuable results for humanity. The physiological principles which he enunciated, based on extensive study and observation in civil life, cannot be controverted; but their practical application, so far as regards the treatment of gunshot wounds, has been greatly modified since his treatise on the subject was published. There cannot be a better illustration of the special position in which this department of military surgery is placed, from the peculiar circumstances under which it is practiced, than the fact that, though men of the highest mental attainments have discussed the subject of gunshot wounds, we are nevertheless indebted to practical experience in military campaigns for every improvement, some few of recent date excepted, that has occurred in their treatment. Thus John Hunter was led to advocate very strongly the delay of amputation, after severe gunshot wounds, for weeks, that the patient’s constitution might accommodate itself to the injury; while more extended observation has demonstrated that such secondary amputations are more fatal than those which are performed shortly after the infliction of the wounds leading to them—the advantage of the patient thus coinciding with what must very constantly happen to be a practice of necessity in the field. Mr. Guthrie remarks, in his Commentaries on the Surgery of the Peninsular War, between 1808 and 1815, that the surgical principles and the practice which prevailed at the commencement of the war were superseded on almost all important points at its conclusion; and he quotes a remark of Sir Astley Cooper to the effect that the art of surgery received from the practical experience of that war an impulse and improvement unknown to it before.

The still more recent military operations in Algeria, in Sleswick-Holstein, in the Crimea, and in India have afforded the opportunity of testing practically the applicability to army practice of some of the great improvements which have been accomplished in the civil practice of surgery in Europe since the termination of the war in 1815. Among these may be particularly enumerated the avoidance of amputation of limbs by recourse to excision of joints; resections of injured portions of the shafts of long bones; mitigated amputations, by removal only of those terminal portions of the extremities which had been destroyed by the original injury; and the practice generally of what has been styled conservative surgery. In these wars, too, the value of chloroform as an anesthetic agent in military surgery has been fully established. They have also especially illustrated the influence of various states of health and climates on the results of gunshot wounds. All the anticipations which were held out at the commencement of some of these campaigns have not been realized, but still they have added much valuable information and many improvements to military surgery.

The alterations made during the last five or six years in the arms of a great proportion of the troops of the leading powers of Europe, and which will, no doubt, be extended to all soldiers in regular armies—namely, the transformation of muskets into “armes de précision,” with rifled barrels and graduated aims—have led to changes in the severity and almost in the nature of gunshot wounds from small balls; and the consideration of these changes requires the especial attention of army surgeons. The effects of the new rifle-balls were widely witnessed during a portion of the period of the Crimean war. The campaign just concluded in Italy will probably produce additional practical observations from the Continental surgeons engaged in it. The fearful proportion of killed and wounded—greater than in any former experience—will have shown the effects not only of rifled muskets, but of rifled cannon also; and in the French forces engaged an opportunity will have been afforded of instituting a comparison of the results of their treatment under circumstances of bodily health and hospital accommodation very different from those of the French army in the Crimea. It may be hoped that the experience thus gained will advance the knowledge of gunshot wounds and their treatment a still further stride toward accuracy.

In England, one valuable result which emanated from the late war with Russia was the regular collection and arrangement, under government authority for the first time, of the observations and practice of the medical officers employed in the campaign. The value to science of such systematized historical records, if fairly and fully developed, can scarcely be overrated; and it is to be hoped that henceforth a similar course will be always adopted whenever the country may become involved in war.

VARIETIES OF GUNSHOT WOUNDS.

Gunshot wounds are modified in their nature by the form and kind of missile, by the degree of force with which it is propelled, and by the seat of injury. They are, in addition, affected by the circumstances in which the soldier happens to be placed, and by the state of his health when the injury is received.

Form and nature of missile.—The projectiles used in warfare of the present day are cannon and musket shot, shells of various kinds, hand grenades of iron or thick glass, case-shot, slugs, and other minor varieties of such missiles. These are the ordinary instruments of direct gunshot wounds in warfare; but, in addition, there are numerous sources of indirect wounds, resulting from the discharge of cannon and musketry. These are stones, or other hard substances, struck from parapets or from the surface of the ground by cannon-shot; splinters of wood from platforms and framework, or of iron from gun-carriages; fragments of bone from wounded comrades, or articles in their possession; and any other miscellaneous objects which may happen to come into contact with the solid ball or shell in its course.

The objects above enumerated present several varieties of forms. The chief are—1st, spherical, as cannon-balls, grape, musket-shot, and shells; 2d, cylindro-conoidal, as balls belonging to rifled cannon and rifled muskets; 3d, irregular, but generally bounded by linear and jagged edges, as fragments of shells and splinters.

A gunshot wound, whether received from a direct or indirect projectile, may be complicated by the entrance of extraneous bodies of various kinds, most commonly portions of the cloth or buttons of the dress worn by the person wounded. Such foreign substances, though not of themselves causing the wound, often have a special bearing on the progress of its cure.

Not only the form of outline, but the weight, and in some instances the matter of which the missile is composed, influence the nature of gunshot wounds. In the largest kinds of balls, such as are projected from field-pieces or guns of position, the form offers little subject for consideration to the surgeon. So long as there is momentum enough to carry forward the mass of iron of which these missiles are composed, so long will their weight be the most important ingredient in the production of the wounds inflicted by them. Whether the shot come as a solid cone or bolt from one of the new guns or as a round ball from an ordinary cannon, the injury will be equally destructive to life or limb. The same remark is applicable to the heavier forms of shell, before explosion. The only difference surgeons may look for from the use of cylindro-conoidal balls, or Whitworth bolts applied to cannon, should they become general, independent of increase in the number of direct wounds from greater power and precision of fire, will be the less number of indirect injuries likely to result from their action, as they neither ricochet nor roll as “spent balls” in the manner that spherical shot are accustomed to do.

Grape-shot, canister, and spherical case, on striking collectively—that is, before they have spread—as sometimes happens in assaulting or in accidental close proximity to guns in the field, produce the same kinds of injuries as cannon-shot, but individually resemble musket-shot in their effects. Wounds from grape-shot are always of a grave character, not only from the extent of the flesh wound, but also because, from their large diameter and weight, the nerves and vessels of the part struck are less likely to escape injury, if not destruction, than in wounds from the smaller shot projected in canister or spherical case.

With regard to musket-shot, the form presents several features for the consideration of the military surgeon. In discussing the subject, however, it must not be omitted to be borne in mind that we have no experience of the effects of round musket-balls propelled with the same amount of force as recent improvements in fire-arms have given to balls furnished with a conical vertex; although, in the old, two-grooved rifle, with its belted round ball, a momentum was procured far exceeding that of the common smooth-bore musket. The change in form from the round to the prolonged cylindro-conoidal ball seems to derive its chief importance in surgery from the conical end possessing the mechanical characteristic of a wedge, while the former acted simply as an obtuse body. From this quality the power of penetration of conical bullets is greater, independent of the increased momentum communicated to them by the construction of the weapons from which they are discharged. Thus, supposing one of the old musket-bullets to strike a limb at 80 yards, and an Enfield rifle conical bullet of the same weight at 800 yards, the rate of velocity being similar in each case, the injury from the latter may be expected to be considerably greater than that from the former, on account of its shape. The wedge-like quality of the conical bullet is rendered particularly obvious on its being driven into the shafts of the long bones of the extremities. The solid, osseous texture of which the cylindrical portion of these bones is composed is split up into fragments, having mainly a direction parallel with the central cavity; and fissures not unfrequently extend from the seat of injury to their terminations in the joints, of which they form component parts. Such results were scarcely ever noticed from the impulse of round balls. The bone might be comminuted, but the fragments were of a more cuboid shape, and the long fissuring did not occur. It has been stated that the screw motion impressed on the ball by the rifling of the musket contributes to its increased power of injury on bone; but its shape, combined with its momentum, seem sufficient to explain the severity of its effects above those of the round bullet. Another result of the tapering form of the conical bullet is that it is less exposed, in its course through soft parts of the body, to opposition from tendons and other long and elastic structures, so frequently noticed to stay the progress of spherical shot. If not dividing them by direct impingement, it readily turns them aside; and it is partly due to this pointed shape, therefore, as well as to increased force, that, as will be noticed hereafter, the lodgment of balls is now so rare in comparison with the experience of former wars.

Much has been written on the comparative surgical effects of bullets of various weights and sizes; but these qualities do not, on consideration, excite so much practical interest in the mind of the surgeon as it might at first appear they are calculated to do. Some very heavy bullets were used by the Russians in the defense of Sebastopol, nearly one-third heavier than any employed by the troops opposed to them. Such bullets, if of like form and density, and propelled with equal velocity, would obviously inflict injuries—especially against osseous structures, which offer great resistance—wider in proportion to their greater size and momentum; but, in respect to simple flesh wounds, the increased size of the wound left by the larger ball would make little difference in the gravity of the wound, or the time required for its cure, while the escape of foreign substances, which it might happen to carry with it, would be facilitated by the freer means of exit and increased discharge from the surface. Mr. Guthrie mentions that, having had a wide field for observation in the effects of the heavy British musket-ball, sixteen to the pound, on the French wounded, he did not think them more mischievous in their results than the French musket-balls, twenty to the pound, on the English soldiers; while the advantages of carrying a lighter musket and greater number of rounds of ammunition were on the side of our adversaries. It is understood that in warfare the object is not so much to destroy life as to disable antagonists, and the smaller size has been supposed to be fully equal to this object by the British military authorities of the present day; for in the weapon most recently given to the troops, the Enfield rifle, the weight of the ball has been reduced two drachms and a half below that of the ball with the Minié, previously in use. After all, within the moderate limits which must be preserved to suit the circumstances of infantry soldiers, the form and velocity of musket-balls must be the qualities of interest to the surgeon in connection with the wounds inflicted by them, rather than their weight or size, as with projectiles from guns of large caliber.

Double bullets, linked together by a spiral coil of wire, something after the manner of chain cannot-shot, were introduced by the Russians during the war in the Crimea. Specimens of these bullets were found about the works around Sebastopol, but no injuries received from them have been recorded; although, after the discovery, peculiarities in the characters of some wounds, which had not previously been satisfactorily accounted for, were supposed to have probably resulted from them. It seems likely, however, that, when discharged, the divergent forces impressed on the two bullets were sufficiently great to break apart the connecting wire, which was of very slender diameter, before they came into contact with the troops against whom they were directed. Dr. Scrive, in his History of the Eastern Campaign, mentions also that incendiary balls were employed by the Russians. They consisted of a small cylinder of copper containing a detonating composition, and made up into the form of an ordinary cartridge, so as to be discharged from a musket. On hitting its object, the projectile burst with violence. These balls were not known till after the conclusion of the siege; and it was only then, M. Scrive remarks, that a key was obtained to some wounds of a frightful character which could not be accounted for by the action of ordinary bullets or fragments of shell. No similar observation is recorded in the British surgical history of the war.

Wounds caused indirectly by stones from parapets, splinters of iron or wood, and by fragments of shells are very varied in character and severity. They derive their importance chiefly from the extent of surface usually lacerated and destroyed. Unless they happen to have penetrated or torn away largely the coverings of vital parts of the body, they are often less grave, though to the sight more fearful, than injuries of less alarming appearance from direct projectiles. In missiles of this secondary kind, the amount of resistance offered to their displacement proportionably diminishes the impetus with which they strike. In like manner, the powerful opposition of the hollow iron shell to the force of the bursting charge within, as well as the shape of the portions into which it is usually rent asunder, combine to cause the momentum of each fragment at starting to be much less, and this momentum to be more rapidly retarded during its flight through the air, than happens in ordinary missiles of direct explosion. The constitutional shock, in these injuries, is consequently, as a general rule, less than in direct gunshot wounds. Occasionally simple fractures happen from indirect missiles; from direct, they are almost necessarily compound. Although there may be no communication with an external wound, however, there is often great comminution of the bone in these accidents. The laceration and bruising of the soft parts are frequently rendered more dangerous from indirect projectiles in consequence of large vessels or nerves being implicated in the injuries, leading more often to primary hemorrhage and subsequent sloughing of wider tracts than in wounds from direct projectiles of corresponding size. Such sloughing may lead to a fracture of bone becoming compound which was at first simple. Fragments of shells sometimes wound by falling, after having been projected upward in the air. These do not generally produce such serious injuries as fragments striking at once from the exploded shell; not that the force is different, but because the parts chiefly exposed—the shoulders, back, etc.—are more protected from injury, and offer less resistance, from relative form and position, than do the abdomen, loins, and other parts of the body, which usually meet the fragments shot upward when the shell explodes on the ground.

Degree of velocity.—The velocity of motion of different projectiles is an important ingredient in the consideration of the several wounds produced by them. The rates of motion imparted to missiles by the fire-arms of early times were probably, from the imperfect construction of the weapons, defective quality of gunpowder, and other circumstances, as inferior to those of the musket lately in use as the velocity of musket-balls was to that of the conical bullets of the rifles in present use. In a table showing the velocities of certain moving bodies, published in 1851, the common musket-bullet is set down as moving at the rate of 850 miles per hour, the rifle-ball of that time at 1000, the 24-lb. cannon-ball at 1600 miles per hour. But the musket-ball then could not be depended on to hit an object beyond 80 yards, the rifle 200 to 250 yards; while the present Enfield rifle is sighted to 900 yards, and the short Enfield to 1100 yards. The effects of different rates of velocity on wounds are seen in the variations which occur in proportion to the distance which the missile has traveled before inflicting the injury. A cannon-ball which, with but slight velocity of motion added to its weight, would knock a man over, at ordinary speed will carry away a limb without disturbing the general equilibrium of the body. A musket-ball that would be arrested half way through a limb is now replaced by a ball which, at like distance from the point of discharge, will pass through several bodies in succession.

The increased velocity, or, in other words, greater force, of modern projectiles exhibits its effects in two directions—locally, by the greater destruction of the tissues in the track of the projectile; and constitutionally, by greater disturbance in the nerve-force of the whole system. The component parts of that portion of the organized fabric through which a bullet, traveling at the rate of several miles per minute, cleaves its way are inevitably deprived of their vitality. Instances are quoted by authors, of gunshot wounds having healed by simple adhesion; but such examples are not met with from rifle-bullets retaining their original form. Moreover, when considering the course taken by balls in the body, it will have to be shown that the velocity imparted to projectiles from modern weapons has led to another change in gunshot wounds. The great power of resistance so often before exhibited by the yielding elastic tissue of the skin, by tendinous and other structures, is no longer of avail against projectiles from modern fire-arms at their usual rates of speed.

The splitting and destructive effects of conical balls on the shafts of the long bones of the extremities have already been mentioned when referring to the peculiarities of their shape. But, together with form, the amount of momentum is a necessary ingredient in estimating this result. The old round balls—partly from their form, but also from the imperfect mechanism of the firelocks from which they were discharged, and consequent minor degree of velocity imparted to them—on striking bones, would simply be turned away from the direct line, or, failing this, would knock out a portion of the shaft without further fracture, or, having perforated on one side, remain in the cancellated structure, or be simply flattened without penetrating. It seems not unlikely, also, that the modern conical bullets are denser, from the circumstance of their manufacture by mechanical pressure, than bullets, such as are still used in some places, cast in moulds. The influence of density with respect to power of penetration is very great. In the two most perfect of modern English rifles, the Enfield and the Whitworth, the projectiles and charges being of the same weight, when lead is used, the penetration at 800 yards is one-third greater with the Whitworth than the Enfield; but if a less yielding projectile is used, (as when the lead is mixed with tin,) its penetration is as 17 to 4 at 800 yards. Whether this cause operates or not, the fact is certain that conical balls in action exhibit almost invariably an overpowering force over all the structures, bone included, with which they come into contact in the human body, and are rarely met with flattened, or so much altered in form as bullets not unfrequently were formerly under like circumstances.

Number of wounds in battle.—The increased velocity of modern projectiles, together with the more rectilinear path in which they move, causes a greater number of wounds in modern warfare. The difference which has existed in the proportion of wounded to shots discharged in recent engagements, compared with the experience of former wars, is most marked. It is well known that from expansion of the bore of the musket in use a few years since, and consequent increase in the difference between its diameter and that of the bullet, after a few rounds of fire musket-balls rolled out in numerous instances in the act of elevation of the musket previous to discharge. Now every shot is propelled to a great distance, and with force sufficient, if brought into collision early in its flight, to penetrate and wound several persons. Colonel Wilford, Chief Instructor at the Government School of Musketry, stated publicly in a recent lecture the fact that 80,000 rounds of ball-cartridge were fired from the old musket in one day in Caffraria, and only 25 Caffres were known to be hit; while at Cawnpore, one company of soldiers, armed with the Enfield rifle, brought down 69 out of a body of horsemen by whom they were attacked, at one discharge. At the battle of Salamanca, only one ball in 3000 fired by the British took effect. Another result is, that we may now expect to meet more frequently the occurrence of several bullet wounds in the same individual. It is mentioned that, among the wounded from Solferino, it was not uncommon to see several wounds of different origins in one body; and M. Appia mentions a case, in one of the hospitals at Brescia, where a soldier had been struck at the same time by four balls. These circumstances become important in estimating the amount of surgical attendance that is required in modern engagements. At the battle of Solferino, just referred to, some returns show that, in twenty-four hours, 11,500 French, 5300 Sardinians, and 21,000 Austrians were laid hors de combat. The surgeons had no time to attend to the first necessities of a great proportion of the wounded. A multitude of those unfortunates were hastily conveyed to the little village of Castiglione, and had to wait hours, many even days, before their wounds could be dressed. To relieve thirst, and apply wet compresses of linen to ease the pain of the wounds, by calling into service the people of the neighborhood, was as much as could be done to a great number for the first day or two, on account of the vast number of wounds inflicted by the new weapons. At Brescia, within a short time after this battle, 15,000 wounded were congregated in thirty-eight fixed and temporary hospitals. From the actions in Flanders on the 16th, 17th, and 18th of June, 1815, including the battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo, the returns show the number of wounded, not including those killed in action, in the Duke of Wellington’s army, to have been rather more than 8000. In the whole Crimean campaign, the total number of British wounded amounted to 11,361, exclusive of men killed in action.

Spent balls.—In connection with degree of velocity, the subject of what are called “spent balls” naturally occurs. After a cannon-ball has ceased to pursue its course through the air or to proceed by ricochet, it not unfrequently travels to a considerable distance, rolling along the surface of the ground. When its rate of movement is not much faster than that at which a man can walk, and when to all appearance it might be stopped by the pressure of the foot as readily as a cricket-ball, it yet possesses the power of inflicting serious injury on such an attempt being put into execution. This power is easily understood if the amount of force is remembered which must still be inherent in the cannon-ball for it to overcome the inertia of its own mass, and the resistance to which it is exposed in passing over the ground on which it is rolling. It is this force, multiplied by the weight of the ball, which gives it the destructive power. If this ball is brought into collision with the foot of a person, such destruction ensues as generally to necessitate amputation. Should it impinge on other parts of the body, as in the instance of a man lying on the ground, it may cause mortal injury to internal organs, and that without exhibiting external evidence of the amount of injury it has inflicted. So, also, though powerless to carry away a limb, it may cause comminuted fractures of bones and extensive contusions of the softer structures.

Lodgment of balls.—Low rate of velocity leads to musket and other balls lodging in various parts of the body. When the smooth-bore musket was in common use, lodgment of balls was of frequent occurrence. In the first place, from absence of sufficient initial velocity to effect its passage out of the body, and, secondly, from its liability to be diverted from a direct line, a round ball might be arrested in its progress at any distance from its point of entrance. Conical balls lodge when their velocity has become nearly expended before entering the body; or, from peculiarity in the posture of the person wounded, a ball, having had force enough to traverse a limb, may afterward enter into another part of the body and lodge. A ball may reach a part so deep in the muscles of the back, for example, or be so far removed from the aperture of entrance, as to elude all attempts on the part of the surgeon, at the time of examination of the wound, to discover its retreat. Or it may have reached some position from which the surgeon fears to take the necessary steps for its extrication, judging the additional injury that would thus be inflicted more mischievous than the probable effects of allowing the ball to remain lodged.

Unextracted balls lead to consequences varying according to the site of lodgment and state of constitution of the patient. If the ball have become fixed in the body of a muscle, or in its cellular connections, adhesive inflammation may be established around it, and in time a dense sac be thus formed, in which the ball may remain without causing any, or but very slight, inconvenience. M. Baudens asserts that a cellular envelope is of very early formation around balls lodged in muscular tissues. Although thus encysted, a ball may press upon nerves, and give rise to pain and much uneasiness, or may be so situated as to embarrass the person in certain movements of the body. Foreign bodies not unfrequently change the position of their first lodgment, under the effect of gravitation or the impulse of muscular actions. The following instance, which occurred to Staff-Surgeon Dr. Daniell, illustrates the distance to which a lodged ball may travel before finding its exit: In the disastrous affair of Malageah, on the west coast of Africa, fought in May, 1855, between detachments of the West India regiments and the Moriah chiefs, a man was wounded just below the spine of the scapula by a shot fired down from an elevation. The aperture was small, no ball could be traced, and the wound healed up rapidly. Six months afterward the man attended hospital, complaining of inability to march and pain about one of his ankles. A red, painful swelling and abscess formed over the inner malleolus, disease of bone was suspected, when examination led to the discovery of a small iron ball, of irregular shape, which was removed. No pain or irritation had existed between the shoulder and the foot. When lodged in the lower extremities, balls sometimes form for themselves canal-shaped cysts, along which they can be moved freely on pressure. When, however, the health or other circumstances of the patient are not favorable, the lodgment of a ball with a smooth surface, like missiles of a more angular and irregular shape, may excite inflammation and constitutional disturbance of a very troublesome kind, and keep up a profuse suppurating discharge along the track of the wound, or perhaps lead to abscesses burrowing in other directions. Balls have been known to lodge in bones, without their positions having been suspected or inconvenience excited by their presence. On the other hand, balls similarly impacted have given rise to disease, and in some bones, as those of the pelvis, have produced such constitutional irritation as to lead to a fatal termination. Balls lodging in the circumscribed cavities of the body or their contained viscera require notice elsewhere.

Grape-shot, and even balls of larger size from field guns, occasionally lodge. The large, gaping wounds inflicted by such missiles usually render the detection of their lodgment and position very easy; but still remarkable instances have occurred where the presence of bodies of this nature of very large size has been overlooked. Mr. Guthrie’s experience of the war in the Peninsula led him to record that “it was by no means uncommon for such missiles as a grape-shot to lodge wholly unknown to the patient, and to be discovered by the surgeon at a subsequent period, when much time had been lost and misery endured.” The same distinguished surgeon mentions a case where a ball weighing eight pounds was not discovered till the operation of amputating the thigh in which it had lodged was being performed. Baron Larrey describes a similar case: An artilleryman had his femur fractured by a ball, which, according to the man’s description, had afterward struck another artilleryman by his side. On being brought to hospital, no one doubted that the ball, after fracturing the limb, had glanced off; but on amputating, the ball, weighing five pounds, was found in the hollow of the thigh toward the groin. The wound of entrance was on the outside of the thigh; and the ball had not only fractured, but had turned round, the bone. M. Armand, surgeon attached to the French Imperial Guard, has related the case of a soldier who was brought to the ambulance, after the taking of the Mamelon Vert, in the Crimea, with his left thigh wounded; one opening, such as might be made by a large musket-ball, was found on the outside of the thigh. There was no second opening. On examination, a swelling was detected in the popliteal space, without any external mark of injury nor much pain on pressure. It was concluded to be the ball; and, on incising, an enormous grape-shot was found. It had turned round the femur without breaking it. M. Armand writes that the appearance of the wound alone would have led to the supposition that the ball had not lodged, and no one would have suspected that such a thing as a grape-shot had been the cause of it. In the British Surgical History of the Crimean War the case of a soldier of the 1st Royals, who was wounded in the face by a grape-shot weighing 1 lb. 2 oz. is recorded. The ball lodged at the back of the pharynx, and escaped observation for three weeks. Were it not for experience of many such instances, it would be deemed almost impossible that foreign substances of such size and weight could remain in the body without the knowledge of the patient, if not discovered by the surgeon. Even with so large a missile as a grape-shot, a surgeon should not be contented with examining merely by the wound, wide as it usually is, in case lodgment is suspected; it may travel in a direction which may cause its discovery to be very difficult by that track. An officer of the 19th Regiment was struck during the assault on the Redan, on September the 8th, by two grape-shot, at the back of the chest. They entered close to the spine. One of these balls lodged in the inner part of the right arm, below the axilla, whence the writer excised it.

Penetrating fragments of shells, if projected edgeways, almost invariably lodge. In these cases, the appearance of the wound seldom indicates to the observer the true size of the body which has caused the injury. At an early period of the battle of the Alma, a piece of shell, about four pounds in weight, lodged in the buttock of a soldier of the 19th Regiment; and, to extract it, an incision had to be made nearly equal in extent to the length of the original wound. In this instance the concave aspect of the fragment—evidently, by the nature of the curve and thickness, a portion of a very large shell—had adapted itself to the parts lying beneath, while its convex surface so agreed with the natural roundness of the parts above, that it would have been impossible to have arrived at a knowledge of its lodgment, from any change in the external appearance of the parts. Examination by the wound alone gave decided information on the question. Such fragments become very firmly impacted among the fibers of the tissues in which they lodge, and the effused blood fills up inequalities, and rounds off edges that might otherwise show themselves prominently; so that, without due care, their presence is not unlikely to be overlooked at first examination. Dr. Macleod, of Glasgow, mentions that he saw a case at Scutari, in which a piece of shell weighing nearly three pounds was extracted from the hip of a man wounded at the Alma, which had been overlooked for a couple of months, and to which but a small opening led.[1] But bodies of still more irregular form may lodge in this region, and escape notice. A soldier in a battery in the Crimea was wounded, during a heavy artillery fire, in the left hip. A twelvemonth afterward he was in the General Hospital at Chichester, with a narrow sinus, which allowed a probe to pass deeply among the gluteal muscles. On cutting down in the direction indicated, a piece of stone was extracted, upwards of four ounces in weight. This man had passed through several hospitals before his arrival at Chichester.

Bullets scattered from canister or spherical case not unfrequently lodge; apparently in consequence of the direct velocity received from the primary discharge being disturbed, and lessened by the force of the secondary explosion of the case in which they were contained.

A small layer of metal, like a portion of one of the coats of an onion, occasionally becomes detached from a leaden bullet, and lodges. The writer was once applied to by a discharged soldier, suffering from some troublesome granulations at the bottom of the left orbit. The globe of the eye had been destroyed nearly two years before by a musket-ball shot from above, which, after traversing the orbit, had descended, and was excised from the right side of the neck. On examining the granulations by a probe, the point came into contact with a hard substance, which further examination showed to be a small projecting point of lead. It proved to be a scale from the bullet which had caused the original wound, being equal in length to half its circumference, and in width, at the broadest part, about a third of the same dimension. It retained the curved form of the bullet from which it had been detached. The following case shows that similar sections may be separated from cylindro-conical as well as from round bullets. An officer of the 41st Regiment was struck in the Crimea by a conical bullet, which destroyed the forearm in such a manner as to necessitate amputation below the elbow. Secondary hemorrhage occurred on the eleventh day, and on the following day the stump was opened and examined. “While searching for the bleeding vessel, a slice of the bullet, about the size of a worn sixpence, was found deeply imbedded in the muscle.” In the case of a soldier of the 19th Regiment, who was wounded before Sebastopol in the loin by a conical bullet, which was discharged per anum, and who died in Guy’s Hospital of albuminuria, nearly four years afterward, a small scale of lead from the bullet was found at the post-mortem examination fixed in the spleen. Strange to say, in this instance the lodgment did not appear to have excited any inflammatory action or mischief.

Lodgment of small foreign bodies, angular pieces of metal, as slugs, nails, and others, and of soft textures, as shreds of linen or woolen cloth, often give rise to much inconvenience. The track of a musket-ball may be prevented from healing, and a troublesome sinus formed, by such small fibers of cloth as would hardly attract notice if within means of observation. Although a wound be closed, and apparently healed, if any shreds of cloth remain, it will probably open from time to time, when small fibers may be noticed in the discharge; and this will continue until the whole is thus got rid of. The probability of cloth entering a wound with the conical ball is not so great as it was with the spherical ball, which not unfrequently tore out a little cap, as it were, of cloth in its passage. This is another result of its shape and velocity. John Hunter and others make mention of circular pieces of the skin being cut out by bullets, and then lodging, and acting as foreign bodies in the wounds.

When the Minié-ball, with the iron cup at its base, was first brought into use, surgeons anticipated that the addition of the iron cup would complicate the ill effects of the wounds inflicted by it. It does not appear that this has proved to be the case. The iron is usually so far driven into the lead by the force of the exploded gunpowder, and so firmly fixed by the alteration in shape and pressure of the lower part of the ball, that it but rarely becomes detached so as to form a separate lodgment.

Gravel and small stones struck up by shells at the time of their explosion, or by shot ricochetting against the ground, often lodge, and give much trouble in their extraction, especially about the face. In the assault of Sebastopol, at the Great Redan, the attacking parties in their approach, the ground being rocky and having been much broken up by shell explosions, were particularly exposed to such injuries; and in several instances men were placed hors de combat by dust and small fragments of stone thus projected, though the injuries were not of a permanently serious character. One case is recorded where both eyes were penetrated and totally destroyed by gravel thrown up by a shell explosion.

Foreign substances derived from persons standing near a wounded man, sometimes fragments of the bodies of other wounded men, have been already named as occasionally lodging. In a severe injury to the face, which occurred in a man of the 1st brigade of the Light Division, in the Crimea, the surgeon was at first puzzled by the strange displacement of a part of the upper jaw. After closer examination, and obtaining a clearer view by the removal of clot, it was found that a piece of the jaw of another man, whose head had been smashed by a round shot by his side in the battery, had been driven into the palate, and was there impacted. Among other cases recorded in the Surgical History of the Crimean War, is one of a double tooth of a comrade having been found imbedded in the globe of the eye; and another, where a portion of a comrade’s skull was removed from between the eyelids of a soldier. In such injuries as these, where one of two men standing side by side is wounded by a portion of the body of his neighbor, the fragment striking is usually detached from a corresponding region with that struck. The late Mr. Guthrie extracted from the thigh of a Hanoverian soldier, on the third day after his admission into hospital, two five-franc pieces and a copper coin. The man had had no money about him previously to the injury, nor pocket to contain any. The coins had been carried from the pocket of a neighbor, who stood before him in the ranks, and who had been hit by the same grape-shot. These coins, flattened out and jammed together by the force of the shot, are in the museum at Fort Pitt. Similar examples might be multiplied; but sufficient have been mentioned to show the necessity of careful examination in warfare, not only for direct missiles which may effect lodgment in the body, but for many other foreign substances which may be forced in by their agency.

Internal wounds without external marks.—Among the wide variety of injuries from gunshot, there have not unfrequently been noticed cases in which serious internal mischief has been inflicted, without any external marks of violence to indicate its having resulted from the stroke of a projectile. An important viscus of the abdomen has been ruptured, yet no bruising of the parietes observable; symptoms of cerebral concussion have shown themselves, yet no injury of the scalp to be detected. Even bones have been comminuted without any wound of the integuments or appearance of injury. The records of the Crimean campaign afforded not unfrequent examples of such wounds. Two cases occur, in the French records, of fracture of the forearm without any external apparent lesion; in one the internal structures were reduced to a mass of pulp. The difficulty of reconciling the several facts noticed in such instances, together with the vague descriptions by patients of their sensations, led surgeons to seek an explanation for them in the supposition that masses of metal projected with great velocity through the air might inflict such injuries indirectly by aerial percussion. Either the air might be forcibly driven against the part injured by the power and pressure of the ball in its flight, or a momentary vacuum might be created, and the forcible rush of air to refill this blank might be the origin of the hurt. Electricity has also been called into aid in explaining these injuries. All these hypotheses are now abandoned. So many observations have been made of cannon-balls passing close to various parts of the body, as near as conceivable without actual contact, without any such consequences as those attributed to windage, as to lead to the necessary conclusion that the theory must in all instances have been fallacious. Portions of uniform and accouterments have been torn away by cannon-balls without injury to the soldier himself. Even hair from the head has been shaved off, and cases are on record where the external ear and end of the nose have been carried away without further mischief.

The true explanation of the appearances presented in those cases which were formerly called “wind contusions,” appears to rest in the peculiar direction, the degree of obliquity, with which the missile impinges on the elastic skin, together with the situation of the structures injured beneath the surface, relatively to the weight and momentum of the ball on one side, and hard resisting substances on the other. Thus, in the case of a cannon-ball passing across the abdomen, as in two instances mentioned by Sir Gilbert Blane, where men were killed by the passage of balls across the epigastrium, the elasticity of the skin probably enabled that structure to yield to the strain to which it was exposed, while viscera were ruptured by the projectile forcing them against the vertebral column. So the weight of a ball passing obliquely over a forearm may possibly crush the bone between itself and some hard substance against which the arm may be accidentally resting, without lesion of the interposed skin. Baron Larrey, who examined many fatal cases of this kind, relates that he always found so much internal disorganization as to leave no doubt in his mind of its being the result of contact with the ball. He explained the absence of superficial lesion, by the surface having been struck by cannon-balls in the latter part of their flight, when they had undergone a change of direction from straight to curvilinear, and acquired a revolving motion, owing to atmospheric resistance and the effect of gravitation. In such a condition, he argued, they would turn round a part of the body, as a wheel passes over a limb, in place of forcing their way through it; and, while elastic structures would yield, bones and muscles, offering more opposition, would be bruised or broken.

In some recently published letters on the wounded in the late campaign in Italy, by M. Appia, this writer states that wounds from massive projectiles having been rare, he had not met with an example of internal destruction of parts with skin preserved intact, and that he had nowhere seen a wound which was attributed to vent de boulet. The hypothesis, he remarks, seems generally abandoned. It is presumed that, in stating wounds from gros projectiles to have been rare, he refers only to the wounded in the hospitals, and that it is to be inferred that the injuries from cannon-shot proved generally fatal in the field.

Seat of injury.—A knowledge of the seat of injury from the passage of a ball involves diagnosis of its course, the depth of its penetration, the particular organs or structures injured, and the extent of the injuries to which they have severally been subjected. The course pursued by balls in wounds presents many features of interest. The depth of penetration, in connection with direction, becomes of great importance when there is question of one of the great visceral cavities being opened. This part of the subject, however, together with that of injuries to the viscera themselves, will be more conveniently considered when treating of gunshot wounds in their special relations to particular regions. In like manner, the diagnosis of the extent of injury in wounds complicated with fractures of the long bones will be best considered under gunshot wounds of the extremities.

Course of balls.—Of the circuitous and unexpected directions pursued by bullets in their course through the human frame, which were formerly so common, we are not likely to see many instances in future warfare, when the rifle is the weapon chiefly employed. The conical shape of the ball and the force with which it is propelled have had the effect, among others already named, of changing this characteristic of the ball from the smooth-bored musket. The latter, bearing a force that scarcely carried it true to a mark at eighty yards, and usually receiving, as it left the firelock, an impulse which caused it to revolve on its axis at right angles with the line of flight, was deflected by the most trifling obliquity of surface, by the resisting obstacle of a bone, by tendons or the aponeuroses of muscles, or even by the elastic resilience of muscles themselves in a state of action, when the relative direction of their fibers was favorably placed to exert this influence. The Enfield cylindro-conoidal bullet, armed with a force that will carry it to a given spot distant one thousand yards or upwards, flies like an arrow, penetrates the softer tissues in a straight line, and on meeting bone, as before noticed, enters it like a wedge. When a bullet of this kind strikes an object point-blank, it is always the apex of the conical part which first meets the object struck; and, if sufficient resistance be met with, it is this apex which becomes first compressed and turned back. When it strikes a solid object lying nearly parallel with its line of flight, the ball is planed, as it were, from its apex toward its base. In a case before referred to—page 29—where a conical ball entered the loin of a soldier of the 19th Regiment, and was subsequently passed per anum, the apex of the bullet was found to be turned and bent round on itself, and the ball generally flattened. On examining carefully the convex surface of the convoluted apex, minute spiculæ of bone were observed to be impacted in its substance. It became evident, therefore, that the ball had struck, probably penetrated through, some portion of the lumbar vertebræ in its course from the loin to the intestine. There were no general symptoms to indicate spinal injury, but, four years afterward, the opportunity of a post-mortem examination being afforded, the track of the ball through some of the lumbar vertebræ was distinctly traced.[2]

It will often appear, at first examination, that the track of a wound by the cylindro-conoidal bullet, even at full speed, is widely removed from a straight line, especially when this class of injuries is new to the surgeon. It is not difficult to understand the apparent irregularity in the line of the wound, when the many varied positions in which the body and its parts are liable to be placed are called to mind, and if, when making the examination, the surgeon has omitted to place the patient in a similar posture to that he was in when struck. A certain allowance must also be made for the spasmodic actions of the various muscles among themselves, and momentary displacement of other structures, at the instant of receiving the injury.

Occasionally, though rarely, an accidental concurrence of circumstances may lead to the conical bullet pursuing a circuitous instead of a direct course, especially when, after traveling a certain distance, its speed has become diminished; and, as round musket-balls are not yet wholly discarded from warfare, it is necessary to call attention to the observations which have been made on this subject. Balls have been known to pass round the outer convex and the inner concave surfaces of the abdominal and thoracic cavities, sometimes forcing their exit at points nearly opposite to those of entrance, sometimes making a complete circuit. Thus, from simple observation of the line of direction of two wounds, a ball may be supposed to have passed through the thorax or abdomen, while really it may not have penetrated the cavity, but only made its way beneath the integument. In like manner, a lung may be supposed to have been traversed by a ball, not merely from the relative position of the wounds of entrance and exit, but also by some of the characteristic signs of such an injury, when really the ball, after entering the cavity of the chest, has rolled round the costal pleura, never penetrating the lung, but at the most bruising its surface. In the same way, balls have been known to travel round the cranium beneath the scalp, and to have found their way beneath the integuments of the neck, without injury to the deeper structures. Dr. Hennen saw a case where a ball was found lying in a wound by the thyroid cartilage. It had made a complete circuit of the neck, and returned to the spot where it had entered. Cases sometimes occur where two openings are found in a man’s shoulder, in such relation that a straight line between them would necessarily pass through the head of the humerus, yet the ball has only made a half circuit, outside the joint.

Many examples of such injuries will be found in the works of all writers on gunshot wounds until the recent introduction of rifled weapons, while those who have only seen the latter in use are almost inclined to doubt the accuracy of previous statements on this subject, from not meeting with similar instances in their own experience. In the early part of the late war with Russia, the musket wounds were nearly all inflicted by the round bullet; but during the year 1855 conical bullets of various shapes and sizes were brought into use by the Russians generally, as they had been for some time previously by nearly the whole of the English army, and a large proportion of the French army. As early as the battle of Inkerman, however, the Russians were partly armed with the Liège rifle, with its conical bullet. Among 3000 wounded from the recent battles of Palestro and Magenta, assembled in the hospitals at Turin, M. Appia, whose letters on the wounded in the late Italian campaign have been before quoted from, writes that he was astonished not to meet one case of a cylindrical ball having taken a curved direction in its passage. He mentions the case of an officer being wounded by a ball, which entered at the epigastrium and passed out by the side of one of the lumbar vertebræ, without penetration of the abdomen, a red mark or zone connecting the two wounds and indicating the circuit which the ball had made. In another case, a ball had traversed the chest from right to left, and still had sufficient force to wound the left arm. Both these injuries, however, were caused by spherical balls.

SYMPTOMS OF GUNSHOT WOUNDS.

The leading symptoms of gunshot wounds are the diagnostic marks of these injuries, and the constitutional disturbance, pain, hemorrhage, edema, and other circumstances with which they are attended. Some of these require to be noticed separately.

Diagnosis.—The external distinguishing signs of a penetrating gunshot wound are generally manifest enough, but exact diagnosis of the nature and extent of the wound is not always so simple as it might at first appear to be. It is necessary to describe, firstly, the external appearances. These, although possessing certain universal characteristics, vary to a wide extent, according to the different forms, already described, of the missiles causing the injuries, their velocity, the part of the body struck, and its position relative to the projectile at the time of injury.

When a cannon-ball at full speed strikes in direct line a part of the body, it carries away all before it. If the head, chest, or abdomen are exposed to the shot, an opening corresponding with the size of the ball is effected, the contiguous viscera are scattered, and life is at once extinguished. If it be part of one of the extremities which is thus removed, the end remaining attached to the body presents a stump with nearly a level surface of darkly contused, almost pulpified, tissues. The skin and muscles do not retract, as they would had they been divided by incision. Minute particles of bone will be found among the soft tissues on one side, but the portion of the shaft of the bone remaining in situ is probably entire.

In ricochet firing, or in any case where the force of the cannon-shot is partly expended, the extremity, or portion of the trunk, may be equally carried away, but the laceration of the remaining parts of the body will be greater. The surface of the wound will be less even. Muscles will be separated from each other, and hang loosely, offering at their divided ends little appearance of vitality; spiculæ of bone of larger size will probably be found among them; and the shaft may be found shattered and split far above the line of its transverse division. The injury to nerves and vessels may be proportionally higher and greater. Occasionally it happens, even where the limb seems to have been struck in direct line, that it is nevertheless not completely detached, but remains connected by shreds of the skin and parts of the tissues, on which the bone, reduced to minute fragments, is mixed with the contused muscles and other soft parts in a shapeless mass.

If the speed be still further diminished, so that the projectile becomes what is termed a “spent ball,” there will not be removal of the part of the body struck, but the external appearances will be limited usually to ecchymosis and tumefaction, without division of surface; or even these may be wanting, notwithstanding the existence of serious internal disorganization. The rationale of such phenomena has been previously described.

Should the cannon-ball strike in a slanting direction, the external appearances of the wound will be similar to those just described, according to its velocity, modified only in extent by the degree of obliquity with which the shot is carried into contact with the trunk or extremity wounded.

Large fragments of heavy shells generally produce immense laceration and separation of the parts against which they strike, but do not carry away or grind, as round shot. Ordinarily, the line of direction in which they move forms an obtuse angle with the part of the body wounded. When they happen to strike in a more direct line, so as to penetrate, the external wound, as alluded to under the head of lodgment of projectiles, is mostly much smaller than the fragment itself, from the projectile not having had force enough to destroy the vitality and elasticity of the soft parts through which it entered.

Small projectiles, with force enough to penetrate the body, leave one or more openings, the external appearances of which also vary according to their form and velocity. The appearance of a wound from a rifle-ball, at its highest rate of speed, may be sometimes witnessed in cases of suicide. A soldier, in thus destroying himself, mostly stoops over the muzzle of his firelock, pressing it against the upper part of his body, and springing the trigger by means of his foot. The muzzle is usually applied beneath the chin. In such a case, a circular hole, without any puckering or inversion of the marginal skin, together with dark discoloration of the integument for several inches round, is observed at the wound of entrance. The vertex of the head is shattered; fragments of the parietal and occipital bones, together with small portions of brain, are carried away and scattered about; the bones not broken are loosened from their sutures; the mass of brain is torn to pieces, but held by its membranes; the superficial vessels of the face are distended with blood. These effects are not wholly due to the passage of the ball, but partly to the flame from the ignited gunpowder jetting out at the mouth of the musket, and in part also to the expansive force exerted within the cavity of the cranium, by the gases resulting from the explosion.

When the musket-ball strikes at a distance from the weapon by which it was propelled, but still preserves great velocity, the appearances of the wound are changed. An opening is observed, irregularly circular, with edges generally a little torn; and the whole wound is slightly inverted. There may be darkening of the margin, of a livid purple tinge, from the effects of contusion, or it may be simply deadlike and pale. Should the ball have passed out, the wound of exit will be probably larger, more torn, with slight eversion of its edges and protrusion of the subcutaneous fat, which is thus rendered visible. These appearances are the more easily recognized, the earlier the wound is examined. They are more obvious if a round musket-ball has caused the injury than when it has been inflicted by a cylindro-conoidal bullet. Indeed, with the latter, where it has simply passed through the soft tissues of an extremity of the body at full speed, it is usually very difficult to distinguish by its appearance the wound of entrance from that of exit. In medico-legal investigations concerning gunshot wounds, it must be often a matter of great importance to decide this point; but to the military surgeon, more especially from the circumstances connected with the new projectiles, it has become a subject of little practical interest. When the indirect and tortuous penetration of balls was the rule rather than the exception, a knowledge of the spot at which the ball entered was often useful in diagnosing the mischief it had probably committed in its passage, and in determining the part of the wound where foreign bodies might be supposed to be carried and to be lodging. When the track of the ball is nearly in a straight line, as now usually happens, such information cannot be looked for from knowing the relation of either opening to the entrance or passage of the missile.

A musket-ball ordinarily causes either one wound, as when after entering it lodges, or, as sometimes happens, from its escaping again by the wound of entrance; or two wounds, from making its exit at some point remote from the spot where it entered; but occasionally leads to a greater number of openings. This last result may happen from the ball splitting into two or more portions within the body, and causing so many wounds of exit. A case occurred to M. Dupuytren, where a ball split against the spine of the tibia; and after traversing the calf of the leg in two directions, entered the other leg at two points,—one ball thus causing five orifices. A case occurred to the writer, in the Crimea, where a cylindro-conoidal rifle-ball with three canalures, after fracturing the cranium, was cut in two by the upper edge of bone at the seat of fracture, smoothly as if by a sharp instrument. One part glanced off, the other entered the cranium. A strange feature in this case was, that the depressed portion, after admitting the ball, closed up again; so that no aperture, but only a slight depressed line of fracture, was visible.[3] A somewhat similar case occurred in the 38th Regiment, but the ball appears to have been a round one. M. Huguier has collected some curious cases of splitting of balls, from the records of the French revolution: among others, the division of a ball into two parts, of another into three parts, against the supra-orbital ridge, and of another into three parts against the clavicle. A case is recorded, where a grenadier in Algeria was wounded in five places, all wounds of entrance, by one ball. It was divided into five portions by first striking against a rock at five or six paces from the soldier, the fragments rebounding at various angles. John Hunter mentions the case of a young gentleman who was shot through the abdomen by means of a musket loaded with three balls. In this instance there were only two orifices of entrance and two of exit, one ball having followed in the track of one of the others; “that there were three that went through him was evident, for they afterward made three holes in the wainscot behind him, but two very near each other.” Had it not been for this proof, it being known that three balls were discharged, a suspicion might have existed that one of the three balls had lodged. The recollection that such accidents may occur will sometimes assist in the diagnosis of doubtful cases.

The number of wounds made by one ball may be increased by its traversing two adjoining extremities of the same person, or even distant parts of the body from accidental relative position at the time of the injury. On the 18th of June, 1848, at Paris, a man received a ball in his right arm, above the elbow, which caused a comminuted fracture of the humerus. It then passed across and entered the left arm below the elbow, fracturing the upper part of the radius. Dr. Hennen mentions the case of a man on a scaling-ladder, in which a ball passed from the middle of the upper arm on one side to the middle of the thigh on the opposite side. It is evident, when the ball traverses with sufficient velocity, that these accidents will not unfrequently occur, especially between the upper extremity and trunk. They correspond with such events as more than one person being wounded by the same ball, examples of which were not unfrequently noticed in the trenches before Sebastopol, from enfilading shots, especially prior to the capture of the Mamelon Vert and other outworks; and are said to have been very common in the late campaign in Italy. Should the Whitworth rifle ever be brought into general use, the proportionate number of wounds thus caused from the greater density of the ball, its immensely superior force, and low trajectory, must be still further increased.

The two openings made by one ball may hold such a relative situation as to lead to the mistake of their being supposed to be caused by two distinct balls. A case is recorded where a ball entered the scrotum, and made its exit from the right thigh, without any intermediate mark of its passage; such a wound might lead to an erroneous diagnosis of this sort. Length of traverse, and consequent distance between the two openings, parts of the body brought into unusual relations from peculiarities of posture, and peculiar deflections of the ball, may all be sources of this error.

The appearances of wounds resulting from penetrating missiles of irregular forms, as small pieces of shells, musket-balls flattened against stones, and others, differ from those caused by ordinary bullets in being accompanied with more laceration, according to their length and form. Being usually projected with considerably less force than direct missiles, such projectiles ordinarily lead only to one aperture, that of entrance.

Pain.—A gunshot wound by musket-shot is attended with an amount of pain which varies very much in degree according to the kind of wound, condition of mind, and state of constitution of the soldier at the time of its infliction. It will sometimes happen in simple flesh wounds, that patients will tell the surgeon they were not aware when they were struck; and examples attesting the truth of such statements occur, of soldiers continuing in action for some time without knowing they had been wounded. Sometimes the pain from the shot is described as a sudden smart stroke of a cane; in other instances as the shock of a heavy intense blow. Occasionally the pain will be referred to a part not involved in the track of the wound. Lieutenant M. of the 19th Regiment was wounded by a musket-ball at the assault of the Redan, on the 8th of September, 1855. His sensations led him to imagine that the upper part of his left arm was smashed, and he ran across the open space in front of the works, supporting the arm which he supposed to be broken. On arriving at the advanced trench, he asked for water; on trying to drink, he found that his mouth contained blood, and that he was unable to swallow. The arm, on examination, was found to be uninjured, but a ball had passed from right to left through his neck, and from its direction had no doubt struck some portion of the lower cervical or brachial plexus of nerves. Immediately after the transit of a ball, the sensibility of the track and parts adjoining is found to be partially numbed, so that examination is borne more readily for a short time after the accident than at any later period. Of course, after reaction sets in, or when inflammation has become established, the pain of the wound is proportionably increased. When a ball does not penetrate, but simply inflicts a contusion, the pain is described to be more severe than where an opening has been made by it.

Shock.—When a bone is shattered, a cavity penetrated, an important viscus wounded, a limb carried away by a round shot, pain is not so prominent a symptom as the general perturbation and alarm which supervene on the injury. This is generally described as the “shock” of a gunshot wound. The patient trembles and totters, is pale, complains of being faint, perhaps vomits. His features express anxiety and distress. This emotion is in great measure instinctive; it is witnessed in the horse hit mortally in action, no less than in his rider; it is sympathy of the whole frame with a part subjected to serious injury, expressed through the nervous system. Examples seem to show that it may occasionally be overpowered for a time, even in most severe injuries, by mental and nervous action of another kind; but this can rarely happen when the injury is a vital one. Panic may lead to similar results when the wound is of a less serious nature. A soldier, having his thoughts carried away from himself—his whole frame stimulated to the utmost height of excitement by the continued scenes and circumstances of the fight—when he feels himself wounded, is suddenly recalled to a sense of personal danger; and if he be seized with doubt whether his wound is mortal, depression as low as his excitement was high may immediately follow. This will happen according to individual character and intelligence, state of health, and other circumstances. For while, on the one hand, numerous examples occur in every action of men walking to the field hospital for assistance almost unsupported, and with comparatively little signs of distress, after the loss of an arm or other such severe injury; on the other, men whose wounds are slight in proportion are quite overcome, and require to be carried.

As a general rule, however, the graver the injury, the greater and more persistent is the amount of “shock.” A rifle-bullet which splits up a long bone into many longitudinal fragments, inflicts a very much more serious injury than the ordinary fracture effected by the ball from a smooth-bore musket, and the constitutional shock bears like proportion. When a portion of one or of both lower extremities is carried away by a cannon-ball, the higher toward the trunk the injury is inflicted, the greater the shock, independent of the loss of blood. Some writers, in accounting for “shock,” lay stress on the concussion, and general mechanical effects on the whole body, of the momentum of the iron shot.[4] To a certain extent this may be true, but, judging from analogy in physics, the greater the velocity, and consequently the momentum, of a ball carrying away a limb, the less would the concussion of the trunk and distal parts of the body be. A pistol-ball at full speed will take a circular portion out of a pane of glass without disturbing the remainder; if the speed be much slackened, as when fired from a distance, it will shake the whole pane to pieces.

That true “shock,” (ébranlement of French writers,) as distinguished from shock resulting from mental depression after unusual excitement, or the effects of groundless alarm on the part of a patient, is a phenomenon the essential relations of which are connected with vital force, and with that endowment of the organization only, may be judged from observation of cases in which the direct result of the wound is inevitably fatal, including many where no physical effects on neighboring parts from concussion could possibly be produced. In such injuries the “shock” remains, from the time of first production of the fatal impression till life is extinguished. And the practical experience of every army surgeon teaches him that where a ball has entered the body, though its course be not otherwise indicated, the continuance of shock is a sufficient evidence that some organ essential to life has been implicated in the injury. That the shock of a severe gunshot wound may be complicated with other symptoms, or that some of its own symptoms may be exaggerated from other causes,—hopes disappointed, the approach of death, and all the attendant mental emotions,—scarcely affects the question at issue; for its existence, independent of these complications, in all such cases is undoubted.

Primary hemorrhage.—Primary hemorrhage of a serious nature from gunshot wounds does not often come within the sphere of the surgeon’s observation. If hemorrhage occur from one of the main arteries, it probably proves rapidly fatal; and surgeons, after an action, are usually too much occupied with the urgent necessities of the living wounded to spare time for examining the wounds of the dead, who are mostly buried on the field where they fall. Thus most surgeons speak of primary hemorrhage being exceedingly rare, more rare, perhaps, than it actually is. M. Baudens, referring to his service in Algeria, has remarked that he has often found on the field of battle wounded soldiers who had died of primary hemorrhage.

In those wounds to which the surgeon’s care is called, the primary hemorrhage is ordinarily small in quantity and of short duration—a sudden flow at the moment of injury, and nothing more. When a part of the body is carried away by round shot or shell, the arteries are observed to be nearly in the same state as they are found to be in when a limb is torn off by machinery. The lacerated ends of the middle and inner coats are retracted within the outer cellular coat; the caliber of the vessel is diminished, and tapers to a point near the line of division; it becomes plugged within by coagulum; and the cellulo-fibrous investing sheath, and the clot which combines with it, form on the outside an additional support and restraint against hemorrhage. When large arteries are torn across, and their hemorrhage thus spontaneously prevented, they are seldom withdrawn so far but that their ends may be seen protruding and pulsating among the mass of injured structures; yet, though the impulse may appear very powerful, further hemorrhage is rarely met with from such wounds. There is more danger of continued hemorrhage from wounds by pieces of shell, as the arteries are liable to be wounded without complete transverse section of their coats. The sharp edges, less velocity, and oblique direction in which the fragments usually impinge sufficiently explain this difference.

It comparatively rarely happens that arteries are cut across by musket-bullets, either round or conical. The lax cellular connections of these vessels, the smallness of their diameters in comparison with their length, the elasticity as well as toughness of the tissues forming their coats, the fluidity of their contents, and, in consequence of all these conditions, the extreme readiness with which they slip aside under pressure, act as means of preservation when these important structures are subjected to such danger as the passage of a musket-ball in their direction. Endless examples occur where the ball appears to have passed through in the direct line of the artery, so that it must have been pushed aside by it to have escaped division. Mr. Guthrie mentions a case where a ball even opened the sheath of the femoral vessels, and passed between the artery and vein, in a soldier at Toulouse, without destroying the substance of either vessel. So close was the ball, and such contusion was produced, together with, doubtless, injury to the vasa vasorum, that the artery became plugged with coagulum, and obliterated. A preparation of these vessels is in the museum at Fort Pitt. Another case is mentioned by Mr. Guthrie, where the direction of a ball between the left clavicle and first rib, and permanent diminution of the pulse in the arm on the same side, led to the conclusion that the subclavian had escaped direct destruction by the missile in a similar way.

Vessels do not always thus happily elude division by the ball. Captain V., of the 97th Regiment, whose death led to so much interest in England, was struck by a ball which divided the axillary artery on the right side. The arm had apparently been extended when he received the injury, as if in the act of holding up his sword. The night was very dark, the distance from the place where the sortie took place in which he was wounded to the camp hospital was more than a mile and a half, and he sunk from hemorrhage while being carried up. The death of an officer from division of the femoral artery is recorded in the Surgical History of the Crimean War, where also cases are mentioned, though not immediately fatal, of a wound of the femoral vein and profunda artery in the same subject from a conical bullet; and another, of the popliteal artery and vein, also from a rifle-ball. Mr. Guthrie mentions the cases of two officers who were killed, almost instantaneously, one by direct division of the common iliac artery, the other of the carotid. Primary but indirect hemorrhage, in consequence of a gunshot injury, usually occurs as a complication of fractured long bones, the sharp points and edges of which, extensively torn up as they now are by conical bullets, are well calculated to cause such injuries. They are not as frequent as might be expected, from the limits within which the dispersion of the fragments is restricted by their periosteal and other connections, and the yielding mobility, before mentioned, of the vessels themselves. We have no data, however, to guide us in determining the proportionate frequency of fatal results from primary hemorrhage after wounds; nor can we have them until proper examination and classification of the particular causes of death on the field of battle are instituted.

PROGNOSIS.

Gunshot wounds vary in gravity from the simplest laceration of cuticle to the instantaneous destruction of life. Death may take place primarily from direct causes already alluded to, viz.: from the destruction of vital organs, from extreme shock to the vital forces through the nervous system, or from hemorrhage; or it may ensue indirectly from secondary hemorrhage, gangrene, erysipelas, hectic fever, pyemia, or from the results of operations necessarily required in consequence of the original injury. In estimating the probable issue of a particular wound, not only the state of health at the time, but, if a soldier, the previous service, and diseases under which he has labored during it, must be taken into account, and the circumstances in which he is placed with respect to opportunity of proper care and treatment must also be carefully weighed. The time which has elapsed after the receipt of the injury is another important matter in forming a prognosis. The difficulties which have been already enumerated in the way of arriving at a safe diagnosis of the true nature and extent of the injury, and the liabilities above mentioned to which a patient with a gunshot wound is exposed, should put a surgeon on his guard against giving a hasty judgment in any case that is not very plain and simple. Military surgery abounds with examples of wounds of such extent and gravity as apparently to warrant the most unfavorable prognosis, which have nevertheless terminated in cure; while others, regarded as proportionably trifling, have led to fatal results. Tables may be found in works showing statistically the nature and relative numbers of wounds and injuries received in various actions, with their immediate and remote consequences, as well as the results of the surgical operations they have led to; but these afford little aid toward the prognosis of particular cases, each of which must be estimated in its own individual circumstances. Such tables are chiefly of value where they afford indications of the effects of different modes of treatment in wounds of a corresponding nature, and then only in patients under like circumstances of age and condition. Even moral circumstances must not be disregarded. The probable issue in any given case will be very different in one soldier, who is supported by the stimulating reflection that he has received his wound in a combat which has been attended with victory, from what it will be in another, who labors under the depression consequent upon the circumstances of defeat.

TREATMENT OF GUNSHOT WOUNDS IN GENERAL.

When the circumstances of a battle admit of the arrangement, the wounded should receive surgical attention preliminary to their being transported to the regimental or general field hospitals in rear. A slight provisional dressing, a few judicious directions to the bearers, may occasionally prevent the occurrence of fatal hemorrhage, or avert serious aggravation of the original injury from malposition, shaking, and spasmodic muscular action, in the course of conveyance from the neighborhood of the scene of conflict to the hospital. In the siege operations before Sebastopol, this was accomplished by assistant surgeons in the trenches, or, according to the French system, by regular ambulance hospitals in the ravines leading to them. The provisional treatment should be of the simplest kind, and chiefly directed to the prevention of additional injury during the passage to the hospital, where complete and accurate examination of the nature of the wound can alone be made, and where the patient can remain at rest after being subjected to the required treatment. The removal of any missiles or foreign bodies which may be readily obvious; the application of a piece of lint to the wound; the arrangement of any available support for a broken limb; protection against dust, cold, or other objectionable circumstances likely to occur in the transit; if “shock” exist, the administration of a little wine, aromatic ammonia, or other restorative, in water,—need little time in their execution, and may prove of great service to the patient. If hemorrhage exist from injury to a large vessel, it must of course receive the surgeon’s first and most earnest care. He should not trust to the pressure of a tourniquet, but secure it at once by ligature. Without this safeguard during the transport, and while in the hands of uneducated attendants, the life of the wounded man might be endangered, either from debility consequent upon gradual loss of blood or from sudden fatal hemorrhage. It has been recommended by some surgeons that all attendants whose duties consist in carrying the wounded from a field of battle should be directed, when bleeding is observed, to place a finger in the wound, and keep it there during the transport until the aid of a surgeon is obtained. The precise spot where compression by the finger is wanted, and the degree of pressure necessary, will be quickly made manifest to the sight by the effects on the flow of blood. Such a practice seems to offer less objection than the use of tourniquets by men whose knowledge of their proper application must be exceedingly limited.

On arrival at the hospital, where comparative leisure and absence of exposure afford means of careful diagnosis and definitive treatment, the following are the points to be attended to by the surgeon: firstly, examination of the wound with a view to obtaining a correct knowledge of its nature and extent; secondly, removal of any foreign bodies which may have lodged; thirdly, adjustment of lacerated structures; and fourthly, the application of the primary dressings.

The diagnosis should be established as early as possible after the arrival at hospital. An examination can then be made with more ease to the patient and more satisfactorily to the surgeon than at a later period. Not only is the sensibility of the parts adjoining the track of the ball numbed, but there is less swelling to interfere with the examination, so that the amount of disturbance effected among the several structures is more obviously apparent.

One of the earliest rules for examining a gunshot wound is to place the patient, as nearly as can be ascertained, in a position similar to that in which he was, in relation to the missile, at the time of being struck by it. In almost every instance the examination will be facilitated by attention to this precept. Occasionally it will at once indicate the probable injury to vessels or other important structures, in cases where the mutual relations of the wounds of entrance and exit, in the erect or horizontal posture of the body, would lead to no such information. Even in the direct course taken by a rifle-ball in a simple flesh wound, an erroneous opinion of the line in which the ball has moved may be formed from the first view, in consequence of the ready mobility of the several structures among themselves and their varying degrees of elasticity. Injury to nerves inducing paralysis, contusions of blood-vessels leading to secondary hemorrhage or gangrene, may thus, without sufficient circumspection, be overlooked on the first admission to hospital.

When only one opening has been made by a ball, it is to be presumed that it is lodged somewhere in the wound, and search must be made for it accordingly. But even where two openings exist, and evidence is afforded that these are the apertures of entrance and exit of one projectile, examination should still be made to detect the presence of foreign bodies. Portions of clothing, and, as has already been shown, other harder substances, are not unfrequently carried into a wound by a ball; and, though it itself may pass out, these may remain behind either from being diverted from the straight line of the wound or from becoming caught and impacted in the fibrous tissue through which the ball has passed. The inspection of the garments worn over the part wounded may often serve as a guide in determining whether foreign bodies have entered or not, and, if so, their kind, and thus save time and trouble in the examination of the wound itself.

Of all instruments for conducting an examination of a gunshot wound, the finger of the surgeon is the most appropriate. By its means the direction of the wound can be ascertained with least disturbance of the several structures through which it takes its course. If bones are fractured, the number, shape, length, position, and degree of looseness of the fragments may be more readily observed. In case of lodgment of foreign bodies, not only is their presence more obvious to the finger direct than through the agency of a probe or other metallic instrument, but by its means intelligence of their qualities is also communicated. A piece of cloth lying in a wound is recognized at once by a finger, while, saturated with clot as it is under such circumstances, it would probably be confounded among the other soft parts by any other mode of examination. The index finger naturally occurs as the most convenient for this employment; but the opening through the skin is sometimes too contracted to admit its entrance, and in this case the substitution of the little finger will usually answer all the purposes intended. When the finger fails to reach sufficiently far, owing to the depth of the wound, the examination is often facilitated by pressing the soft parts from an opposite direction toward the finger-end.

It was formerly the custom to enlarge the external orifice of all gunshot wounds by incision, and not merely the opening, but the walls of the wound itself, as soon after the injury as possible. This was not done as a means of rendering the examination easier, but as a prophylactic measure. Dilatation was also employed by tents and various other means with a view to secure the escape of sloughs and discharges. The opinions held by the older surgeons respecting the nature of these injuries, already briefly adverted to in the historical remarks on the subject, sufficiently explain their object in making incisions—namely, to convert what they regarded as a poisoned into a simple wound, and to obviate tension, and prevent strangulation of neighboring tissues by tumefaction or inflammation arising in its track. Even so late as 1792, Baron Percy, in his Manuel du Chirurgien d’Armée, writes: “The first indication of cure is to change the nature of the wound as nearly as possible into an incised one.” English surgeons have, however, generally discarded the practice since the arguments used by John Hunter against it, just about the same date as Baron Percy wrote, excepting only in cases where it is required to allow of the extraction of some extraneous body to secure a wounded artery, to replace parts in their natural situation, as in protrusion of viscera in wounds of the abdomen, or, “in short, when anything can be done to the part wounded after the opening is made for the present relief of the patient or the future good arising from it.” It does not often happen that it is necessary to enlarge the openings of wounds to remove balls, although a certain amount of constriction of the skin may be expected from the addition of the instrument employed in the extraction; but if much resistance is offered to their passage out, it is better to divide the edges of the fascia and skin to the amount of enlargement required than to use force. In removing fragments of shells or detached pieces of bone, the fascia and skin have almost invariably to be divided to a considerable extent.

Where the finger is not sufficiently long to reach the bottom of the wound, even when the soft parts have been approximated by pressure from an opposite direction, and when the lodgment of a projectile is suspected, a long silver probe, that admits of being bent by the hand if required, is the best substitute. Elastic bougies or catheters are apt to become curled among the soft parts, and do not convey to the sense of touch the same amount of information as metallic instruments do. The probe should be employed with great nicety and care, for it may inflict injury on vessels or other structures which have escaped from direct contact with the ball, but have returned, by their elasticity, to the situations from which they had been pushed or drawn aside during its passage. The above directions for examining wounds apply more particularly to such as penetrate the extremities, or extend superficially in other parts of the body; where a missile has entered any of the important cavities, search for it is not to be made, but the surgeon’s attention is to be directed to matters of more vital importance to be hereafter noticed.