Military surgery, or, Experience of field practice in India during the years 1848 and 1849 / by J.J. Cole.

  • Cole, John Jones
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Military surgery, or, Experience of field practice in India during the years 1848 and 1849 / by J.J. Cole. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    injured in the following manner—namely, the periosteum may be torn, and the osseous structure itself bruised t when this last happens, the case is serious. Indeed, it will be seen that contusion of bone and periosteum forms an important class of injuries, and well deserves our best attention. When the ball fairly impinges within range, the head is generally shot through, and in the great majority of cases death is instantaneous, or soon follows. There are, nevertheless, a variety of exceptions to this rule, which we are every day meeting with, and every day puzzled to account for. Sometimes a single grape, musket, or pistol ball, coming in full contact with the skull, flies off at a tangent, or runs upwards, down- wards, or laterally beneath the skin, and passes out; at others the ball perforates the tables of the cranium, - and remains lodged in the bone, or by some extraordi- nary route escapes, without leaving any fatal effects behind. Again, it may pass completely through the head, entering, perhaps, at the occipital tubercle, making its exit above the eyebrow, or coming out through the eye itself; and still death may not be the result. Apparently, here the ball passes through the substance of the brain; traversing, for example, one hemisphere. We do not, however, think that the missile actually goes through the cerebral mass to the depth indicated by the aperture of ingress and egress, as it must be remembered that a ball scarcely ever passes directly into a bony cavity. It drives before it the piece of bone upon which it strikes to a greater or lesser distance,
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