A handy-book of forensic medicine and toxicology / by W. Bathurst Woodman and Charles Meymott Tidy.

Date:: 1877

Credit: A handy-book of forensic medicine and toxicology / by W. Bathurst Woodman and Charles Meymott Tidy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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$bullets are often flattened out into the queerest of shapes, present- ing very sharp angles, which rend and tear terribly. [See remarks under Colt’s Revolvers, Mitrailleuse, (fee., p. 1101.] The injuries from grape-shot are something like those from round shot, but less severe. Mr. Cole, in his “Military Surgery,” London, 1852, says that “the cannon-shot for the first 500 or 600 yards, grinds to powder, and destroys everything that opposes its hissing course.” If it strikes a limb, it either smashes it completely, pulpifying all the tissues it meets, or it may cany the limbs clean off. A man may be decapitated by a cannon- shot, or have both legs taken clean off. These things are, however, less matters for legal medicine than bullet wounds. In the Crimea, though severe haemorrhage was rare from cannon balls, it sometimes happened that the femoral artery was so wounded in this way, as to cause fatal hemorrhage ; aud occasionally a round shot will produce effects more like those of a bullet. This happened in the case of a private, working in the trenches before Sebastopol, shovelling up some earth, with his body beut, and his right hand holding the handle of the shovel, low down in front, between his legs. In this position he was struck by a round shot from a lai'ge gun. It shattered his arm, leaving it hanging only by the integuments ; and passing between the thighs at their upper part, it tore away from each of them a large mass of the integu- ments and muscles, and laid bare the femoral artery on* one side. It carried in front of it the penis, and scrotum, and anus, and guided by the curve of the buttocks, it swept away a large portion of the glutei of one side. [Druitt’s “ Surgeon’s Vade Mecum,” p. 132.] The skin is some- times uninjured, though bones may be broken. The mischief caused by shells, rockets, and other explosives, has already been alluded to. The wounds from these are ragged [lacerated] in the extreme—and often frightfully contused. Druitt says that in the Crimean War, the bursting of one howitzer shell caused ten admissions into the hospital of the 18th regiment, and of those admitted, seven lost either an arm or a leg. [See McCormack’s “ Notes of an Ambulance Surgeon ” fpr other cases, and the “ Blue Books ” of the Army Departments after the Crimean, Franco- German, and American Civil War.] Mr. Erichsen \loc. cit., p. 112] draws attention to the fact that powder alone, may not only produce fatal concussion, when fired close to the heart, for instance, but may actually produce a round hole, like that from a bullet, as in Dupuytren’s case, when a fowling-piece was discharged at a distance of only two or three feet from the abdomen. He notes also that suicides sometimes forget to put the bullet in, but frightful lacerations of the mouth, cheeks, glottis, &c., may be produced by powder and wads alone. When weapons are fired very close, the hair and skin may be singed, burnt, and blackened from the burning powder. This must not be confounded with the blacken- ing due to sloughing, which is a later phenomenon. Paper:pellets and a kid glove fired from a gun have been known to kill. [The first proved fatal to a girl, the second to a man.] A. single pellet of small shot has been known to destroy the eyeball, to kill by wounding the femoral artery or vein, or by lodging in the heart. Mr. Erichsen gives a case in which small shot from a pistol actually penetrated the bodies of the vertebrae. Bad percussion-caps, in exploding, often splinter, and wound the right eye ball. This accident commonly occurs to soldiers, volunteers, and militiamen, but may be met with in little boys who play with toy-pistols, or in civilians who use guns for sporting purposes. 4 c$