The surgical aspects of the modern small-bore projectile / by August Schachner.

  • August Schachner
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The surgical aspects of the modern small-bore projectile / by August Schachner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    quoted by the Washington Post as saying, “ Often prisoners were brought in with two or three bullet-holes through them that seemed to cause the wounded men but little inconvenience, for they had been marched six or seven miles before they reached our bivouac. These prisoners accounted for the extraordinary absence of the dead enemy on the field by saying that unless a man was shot in the head or bowels he did not die, and nothing but a wound in the joints of the lower extremities disabled him. I am clearly of the opinion that for fighting savages the old forty-five (45) calibre arm should be used. The Chitrals had a forty-five (45) calibre rifle, and they disabled or killed a man whenever they hit.” From this it is evident that the practical results have not been sufficient to enable us as yet to reach a uniform conclusion as to the precise merits and demerits of the new projectile. That it has advantages it is useless to repeat; that there are certain shortcomings the practical results have already demon- strated. At present, the interesting feature of the new pro- jectile is to determine the conditions under which the greatest advantages are to be gained. The circumstances under which it behaves as a humane invention and when it does just the reverse. In a contribution to the Revista de Ciencias Medicas, of Havana {loc. cit., London Lancet, June 6, 1896), Dr. Enrique Pedrassa, a Spanish military surgeon, remarks, “ that the benign results he had expected to see do occur, but only when the enemy is 150 yards or more distant. When the patient is shot at from ten to seventy yards, the destruction of the tissues is very great, and it is this that has given rise to the suspicion that explosive bullets were being used, especially as the orifices of outlet and entrance are so small that they can hardly be seen. If the fighting should never occur at less than 200 yards, the Mauser would be the most humane weapon.” To appreciate the small-bore projectile, it is well to consider some of the conditions governing the behavior of the projectiles in general. Whenever a projectile strikes a body we are at once con- fronted by two opposing forces, the one in the main an on- ward force inherent in the projectile, and the other a resistant
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