Gunshot injuries, their history, characteristic features, complications, and general treatment : with statistics concerning them as they have been met with in warfare / by Sir T. Longmore.

Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gunshot injuries, their history, characteristic features, complications, and general treatment : with statistics concerning them as they have been met with in warfare / by Sir T. Longmore. 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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    even been suspected. The man had received a large number of wounds at the battle of Balaclava, and was taken prisoner by the Russians. He subsequently returned to his regiment with all his wounds healed. After he had been for some time at duty he complained of a small tumour, which was hard and tender, near the right nipple. He had been wounded at Balaclava on the opposite side of the chest, near the left nipple, by a musket bullet, but he did not connect the swelling with that wound. The projectile had not penetrated deeply, and was removed after the action without difficulty. Dr. Home, however, suspecting that some foreign body might have been carried in by the bullet and be still lodging, cut down on the swelling, and there discovered a coat button. It was lying in a small encysted abscess, and retained its original bright surface. Up to a short time before the man made his complaint—a period of two years from the date of the original wound—the lodged button had not given the least indication of its presence. It was only after his return to military duty that the pressure of the man’s belt set up the inflammation which led to its discovery. The unchanged condition in which such foreign bodies are usually found after being extracted is in all probability mainly due to the fact of their having been excluded from the access of the air; had they been subjected to its influence while lying in the moist tissues of the body, chemical changes would have been induced which in some of the metals would certainly have pre- vented them from remaining inert. Similar freedom from irritation is rarely witnessed when the lodged foreign body is porous or cellular in its substance, and has an irregular outline, sharp edges, or a rough surface. Splinters of wood, spiculm of bone detached and driven into neighbouring tissues by the force of a bullet, tufts of hair or wool, shreds of cloth or cotton garments, seldom permit a wound in which they remain imbedded to become soundly healed. The aperture of the wound may close up for a time; but, if there be no other way of escape for such foreign bodies, they invariably lead to the wound opening again. Pieces of soldiers’ woollen uniform clothing in particular are observed to act as local irritants. Repeated expe- rience has proved the general rule, that, whatever time may elapse, so long as a fragment of the uniform remains in any part of a wound made by a projectile, so long it will never become soundly healed. A fistulous track, and a certain amount of puru- lent discharge from its aperture, will usually be maintained during the whole period of its lodgment. It is sometimes surprising to find how small a piece of cloth has sufficed to prevent the healing process from being perfected. This may be partly due to the fact that the woollen clothes worn by soldiers in the field have usually been saturated by perspiration, loaded with dust, and therefore