CuAP. in.] ELEPHANT SHOOTIXG. 333 



NOTE. 



Amongst extraordinary recoveries from desperate wounds I 

 venture to record here an instance which occurred in Ceylon 

 to a gentleman while engaged in the chase of elephants, and 

 which, I apprehend, has few parallels in pathological experience. 

 Lieutenant Gerard Fretz, of the Ce3don Rifle Kegiment, whilst 

 shooting at an elephant in the vicinity of Fort ^NlacDonald, in 

 Oovah, was wounded in the face by the bursting of his fowling- 

 piece, on the 22nd January, 1828. He was then about thirty- 

 two years of age. On raising him, it was found that part of 

 the breech of the gun and about two inches of the barrel had 

 been driven through the frontal sinus, at the junction of the 

 nose and forehead. It had sunk almost perpendicularly till the 

 iron plate called " the tail-pin," by which the barrel is made 

 fast to the stock by a screw, had descended through the palate, 

 carrying with it the screw, one extremity of which had forced 

 itself into the right nostril, where it was discernible externally, 

 whilst the headed end lay in contact with his tongue. To 

 extract the jagged mass of iron thus sunk in the ethmoidal and 

 sphenoidal cells was found hopelessly impracticable ; but, strange 

 to tell, after the inflammation subsided, Mr. Fretz recovered 

 rapidly, his general health was unimpaired, and he returned to 

 his regiment with this singular appendage firmly embedded 

 behind the bones of his face. He took his tiu-n of duty as 

 usual, attained the command of his company, participated in all 

 the enjoyments of the mess-room, and died eight years after- 

 .ivards, on the 1st of April, 1836, not from any consequences of 

 this fearful wound, but from fever and inflammation brought 

 on by other causes. 



So little was he apparently inconvenienced by the presence 

 of the strange body in his palate that he was accustomed with 

 his finger partially to undo the screw, which but for its extreme 

 length he might altogether have withdrawn. To enable this 

 to be done, and possibly to assist by this means the extraction 

 of the breech itself through the original orifice (which never 

 entirely closed), an attempt was made in 1835 to take off a 



