"Gunshot Wounds"

This subject is interesting to the American surgeon. We simply enumerate a few striking facts.

A wound from a rifle ball is usually more depressed and discolored at the entrance than exit, the hole in the soft part less in diameter than the ball; the contusion takes the form of several concentric circles, the parts involved sloughing successively.

If the speed of a ball is great, it is very difficult to distinguish between entrance and exit. Concical balls are seldom deflected; striking a bone, they pass through it, taking the shortest course; their wounds are more irregular, from the fact that they often receive their impulse in the direction of a diameter not parallel to the piece, and hence the side often strikes first instead of the end.

It is said that a 32 pound ball will pass through 70 men, an 8 pound ball, 40, a one-ounce ball, 4.

It has been calculated that of all gun shot wounds received in battle, there will be two in the abdomen; four in the neck or breast; seven in the head, ten in the arms; four in the hips or legs; one in the knee, and two in the feet. Nerves and blood vessels, very fortunately, generally escape injury.

The sensation from a gunshot wound resembles, it is said a tame blow from a cane –Very many, however, of the worst wounds are unattended with the least consciousness of injury. A soldier that had both legs shot away thought he had stepped into a hole.

In field works the proportion of killed to wounded is greater than in the open field, from the circumstances of breast and head being more exposed in the former than in in the latter position.

More men, or a larger portion armies, were slain in battle in old times than at the present day, notwithstanding our improvements in firearms. When the losses reach 35 per cent, the battle is ended. They are said seldom to reach this figure, never going beyond it. –Ohio Med. And Surg. Journal