A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / [John Hunter].

  • John Hunter
Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / [John Hunter]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    689/754 (page 671)
    This practice has arisen from experience; for it was found that balls,, when obliged to be left, seldom or ever did any harm when at rest, and when not in a vital part; for balls have been known to lie in the body for years, and are often never found at all, and yet the person has found no inconvenience. This knowledge of the want of power in balls to promote inflammation when left in the body, arose from the difficulty of finding them, or extracting them when found ; and therefore in many cases they were obliged to leave them. One reason for not readily finding the ball at first is, because the parts are only torn and divided, with- out any loss of substance, (till the slough comes off) by which means the parts collapse and fall into their places again, which makes it difficult to pass any thing in the direction of the bail, or even to know its direction. The different courses they take, by being turned aside by some resisting body, add also to the difficulty; as will be explained. But the course of a ball, if not perpendicular, but passing obliquely, and not very deep, a little way under the skin, probably an inch or more, is easy to be traced through its whole course, for the skin over the whole passage of the ball generally is marked by a reddish line. I have seen this redness, even when the ball has gone pretty deep ; it has none of the appearances of inflammation, nor of extravasation, for extravasation is of a darker colour, and what it is owing to, I have not been able to discover. I can conceive it to be something similar to a blush; only the small vessels allowing the red particles of the blood to flow more easily.