228 Professor Victor Horsley [April 6, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, April 6, 1894. 



Sir Eichard Webster, G.C.M.G. M.P. Q.C. LL.D. Vice-President, 



in the Chair. 



Professor Victor Horsley, M.B. B.S. F.R.C.S. F.R.S. M.R.I. 



The Destructive Effects of Projectiles. 



The effects of small projectiles when driven at high velocity through 

 the tissues of the brain have always excited the deepest interest, for 

 very obvious reasons. 



This interest must always be two-sided, namely : (1) Physical; 

 (2) Pathological; and it is upon these two points of view that I 

 propose to speak to you this evening. 



Conceive a cylindrical bullet with a conical head flying through 

 the air some ten or fifteen times faster than an express train. 



We have now to study what it is doing in its aerial flight, and 

 what will happen when that terminates by the projectile striking both 

 hard and soft substances. 



This embodies matter for the purely physical side of the work. 



But imagine, further, that the hard and soft substances just 

 mentioned are the skull and brain respectively, what will happen 

 then? 



This is the pathological part of the question, and it is one of the 

 greatest moment ; for whereas it is true that a few persons do survive 

 being shot in the head, the large majority die ; and it is my object to 

 show you how a combination of physical and pathological experiments 

 has revealed the reason why the majority do die, and revealed it, 

 fortunately, so distinctly as to suggest means for warding off the fatal 

 result. 



1. Physical Considerations. — First take the case of a bullet flying 

 through the atmosphere. Here in this extremely beautiful photograph, 

 kindly lent me by Professor Boys, you observe that the bullet drives 

 before it a wave of compressed air. Now this compressed air-wave is 

 what is popularly called the wind of the shot, and to it used to be 

 ascribed by military surgeons a certain proportion of deaths. The 

 origin of this theory is difficult to discover, as the only case I am 

 aware of in which the post-mortem examination did not reveal 

 haemorrhage, fracture, &c, indicating that the shot had actually 

 struck the body (though without injuring the highly elastic skin), is 

 the instance given by the great Russian military surgeon, Pirogoff, in 



