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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$EFFECTS OF SPENT BALLS. Mr. Erichsen very properly calls attention to the length of time ■which may elapse before the effects of a gun-shot wound are recovered from, or cause death. General Bern required to have a bullet removed by Liston from the external condyle of his femur nineteen yean after it first lodged there. Marshal Money * died from tlie effects of a gun-shot wound received forty years before. A soldier, wounded in the storming of the Redan, in the Crimean War, died two and half years after, of exhaustion from a large lumbar abscess, caused by a bullet entering the left side of the chest, wounding the lung, traversing the diaphragm, notching the spleen, passing between the kidney and supra-renal bodj', and perforating the spine. It lay encapsuled on the right side of one of the vertebrae, pressing upon the right renal vessels. Its irritant effects, and those of the sequestra from the injured spine, caused the abscess which led to his death. We have said above that in the heat of action soldiers are sometimes unconscious of having been wounded. But after a severe gun-shot wound there may be a state of torpor and indiffei’ence, which is often a sign of impending death, and may be accompanied with gangrene of the injured limb. Thus Richeraud [“ Nosographie Chirurg.,” tom. i., p. 221, ed. 2) says: “ C’est dans cet etat que mourut le chevauleger, dont parle Quesnav; l’etat d’hebetude (itait tel, que cet individu, a qui l’on proposa l’amputation de la jambe, repondit que ce n'etait pas son affaire.” f To show what serious results may occur with but slight external injuries, Larrey relates the following cases :—“ At the siege of Rosas two cannoniers, having nearly similar wounds, were brought from the trenches to the ambulance, which Baron Larrey had posted at the village of Palau. They had been struck by a large shot, which towards the termination of its course had grazed posteriorly both shoulders. In one Larrey perceived a slight ecchymosis over all the back part of the trunk, without any apparent solution of continuity. Respiration hardly went on, and the man spat up a large quantity of frothy vermilion blood. The pulse was small and intermitting, and the extremities were cold. He died an hour after the accident, as Larrey had prognosticated. The body was opened in the presence of M. Dubois, Inspector of the Military Hospitals of the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees. The skin was entire; the muscles, aponeuroses, nerves, and vessels of the shoulders were ruptured and lacerated ; the scapulae broken in pieces : the spinous processes of the corresponding dorsal vertebra:, and the pos- terior extremities of the adjacent ribs were fractured. The spiual marrow had suffered injury; the neighbouring part of the lungs was lacerated, and a considerable extravasation had taken place in each cavity of the chest. Tlie second cannonier died of similar symptoms three-quarters of an hour after his arrival at the hospital. On opening the body, the same sort of mischief was discovered, as in the preceding example. [Article, “Gun-shot Wounds,” in Cooper’s “Dictionary of Surgery,” p. 577.] If a shot has been fired in a room, or near to a house, wall, or fence, * Dr. Taylor says that Marshal Maison, one of Napoleon’s generals, died in the same manner. f The light-cavalry soldier of whom Quesnay tells died in this state of torpor. So great was his indifference and apparent stupidity, that when he was told that his leg ought to be amputated, he replied that that teas no business of his /$