Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on gunshot wounds / by T. Longmore. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![arc usually invalided out of the service as soon as they are fit to leave hospital, no opportunity is afforded for observing the consequences which ulteriorly ensue. GUNSHOT WOUNDS OF THE FACE. Wounds of the face from musket-shot, grape, and small fragments of shell are usually more distressing from the de- formity they occasion than dangerous to life. The absence of vital organs, the natural divisions among the bones, and their comparatively soft structure, rendering them less liable to extensive splitting; the copious vascular reticulation and supply rendering necrosis so much less likely and repair so much easier than in other bones ; the limited amount of >pace occupied by the osseous structure between their respective periostea] investments, and the opportunities from the num- ber of cavities and passages connected with this region for the escape of discharges, lead to this result. On the other hand, the vascularity of this region leads to danger both of primary and especially secondary hemorrhage—-a circum- stance which, in all deep wounds of this region, must be looked for as a not improbable complication. The other complications of these gunshot wounds are lesions of the organs of special sense, injury to the base of the skull, pa- ralysis from injury to nerves, wounds of lands, their ducts, and of the lachrymal apparatus; but it is scarcely necessary to do more than allude to them, as the considerations con- nected with their treatment will be found elsewhere. Wounds from cannon-shot occasionally illustrate what ter- rible injuries may be borne in this region without life being at once extinguished. They are the more distressing because the patient lives conscious of his sufferings without possibil- ity of surgical alleviation. The case of an officer of Zouaves, wounded in the Crimea, is recorded, who had his whole face and lower jaw carried away by a ball, the eyes and tongue included, so that there remained only the cranium, supported T](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21137560_0081.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
