661 



GUN-METAL. 



GUN-SHOT WOUNDS. 



662 



necessitates increased thickness of metal. This quickness of explosion 

 is increased to a remarkable extent by impregnating the gun-cotton 

 with solution of chlorate of potash and then drying : on firing off a 

 pistol loaded with two grains of gun-cotton so prepared, the barrel was 

 shattered to pieces. 



No. 1. gun-cotton is produced when acids of the strength commonly 

 met with are used in the preparation. It is non-explosive and only 

 partially soluble in ether containing a small per-centage of alcohol, 

 such solution moreover leaves an opaque film on evaporation. 



No. 2. is only moderately explosive, but readily dissolves in the 

 mixture of ether and alcohol, the solution leaving on evaporation a 

 perfectly transparent film. Hence this variety of gun-cotton is best 

 fitted for the preparation of 



Collodion.- This is the name of the solution just mentioned. It is 

 very largely used by photographers, and is best prepared as follows : 

 Take of nitrate of potash, well powdered and dried, 600 grains, add to 

 it a mixture of one and a half fluid drachms of water, and twelve fluid 

 drachms of oil of vitriol : well stir the whole until it assumes a 

 uniform pasty consistence, and then add in small tufts at a time, about 

 forty grams of finely carded cotton. Let the cotton remain immersed 

 for about ten minutes, and then wash and dry as already directed 

 under explosive gun-cotton. If all the materials used in the process 

 be pure, the resulting gun-cotton will be perfectly soluble in a mixture 

 of seven parts of rectified ether, and one part of absolute alcohol, and 

 moreover, the film of pyroxylin, left on the evaporation of the liquid 

 from a small quantity of the collodion exposed on a glass plate, will be 

 quite clear and transparent. 



Pyroxylin balloons. (Collodion balloom.) A strong solution of 

 collodion is made to flow evenly over the inner surface of a balloon- 

 shaped flask, and evaporated to dryness by blowing dry air into the 

 interior. By a little careful manipulation the pyroxylin may now be 

 detached from the sides of the glass, and the whole drawn through the 

 neck of the flask. 



Pyroxylin balloons may be made use of for some pretty lecture 

 illustrations with explosive gases. Thus they may be inflated with a 

 mixture of two volumes of hydrogen, and one volume of oxygen, 

 allowed to rise to the ceiling of a room, and there ignited. The 

 ignition of the mixture is most conveniently effected by closing the 

 neck of the balloon with a piece of thread impregnated with nitrate of 

 potash, and setting fire to the thread immediately before the balloon 

 leaves the hand. 



GUN-METAL. [BRONZE.] 



GUN-SHOT WOUNDS. Under this head writers on military sur- 

 gery have usually considered not only all the injuries produced by 

 cannon-balls, bullets, &c., striking against the body, but those which 

 arise from the projection of stones, splinters of wood, and other sub- 

 stances broken off and thrown about by heavy balls, or by the explosion 

 of shells, &c. We shall here include, however, only those produced by 

 the shots themselves, because the others differ in no important degree 

 from the more common contused wounds. 



When a shot strikes the body it seldom produces much, if any imme- 

 diate pain : a slight pricking sensation is felt, but the wounded man 

 becomes aware of the injury only by his inability to move the part, or 

 by feeling a little blood trickling over the adjacent sound skin. Whole 

 limbs are known to have been shot off without the consciousness of 

 the individual when in the heat of action. Sometimes when discovered 

 the injury produces but little effect on the system : the courage and 

 intellect remain unaffected ; the pulse and respiration unaltered. Most 

 frequently, however, if the injury be at all severe, it is followed by 

 intense depression : the man becomes deadly pale, and is covered with 

 profuse sweat ; he trembles, and imagines death instantly at hand ; he 

 has shivering, nausea, and sickness," and remains unconscious of pain 

 from his wound, a sign always to be regarded with apprehension. 

 These symptoms may soon subside if stimuli be given ; but if they 

 continue unabated for some hours they afford strong reason to fear 

 that some important organ has been deeply injured. If the heart or 

 the brain be struck, the man is often seen to leap from the ranks into 

 the air and fall at once dead. 



A part may suffer seriously from a shot without the skin being 

 injured. These cases were long considered by surgeons (as they are 

 still popularly) to be owing to the wind of the ball ; that is, to the 

 impulse of the air, set in motion and compressed by its swift passage. 

 But the only portion of the air that could act on the body is that on 

 one side of the ball, and this would not have much force outwards ; 

 besides, the small part of the atmosphere by the side of the ball being 

 compressed in only one direction, while all around is free and move- 

 able, could not acquire that degree of density necessary to produce 

 such effect* as were attributed to it. But still more certain proof that 

 th air moved by the ball is altogether harmless, is afforded by nume- 

 rous cases in which portions of dress are shot off without the parts 

 beneath being injured. Dr. Thomson saw, after the battle of Water- 

 loo, a man who had the tip of his nose carried off by a cannon-ball, 

 without any further inconvenience ; and another whose external ear 

 was shot away, and his hearing not at all affected. Vacher also saw a 

 man between whose legs a cannon-ball had passed, grazing one, and 

 carrying off a piece of the trowsers over the other, but producing no 

 bruise whatever. In the same manner, when a limb is shot off, the 

 parts above the wound are but slightly injured. The real cause of this 



ARTS AND SOI. DIV. VOL. IV. 



kind of injuries is, that the ball, whose force has perhaps been some- 

 what spent by the obstacles it has previously met with, strikes the part 

 obliquely, and therefore with only a small part of its surface, so that 

 the force applied is not sufficient to break through the skin, which ia 

 not only remarkably tough and elastic, but being placed on soft tissues 

 which serve it as a kind of cushion, will yiekl considerably without 

 tearing, and thus slant the ball off in another direction. The muscles 

 and other tissues beneath it, however, being compressed between the 

 ball and the bones, are more or less broken : there may be only a com- 

 mon bruise produced, but frequently the parts are found completely 

 disorganised, broken up into a pulp with the blood effused from the 

 vessels (often of considerable size) that have been ruptured, and some- 

 times even the adjacent bones are split and broken into fragments. If 

 the ball has struck the head, or chest, or abdomen, the organs they 

 contain may be ruptured, and give rise to such haemorrhage or effusion 

 of their contents as may be rapidly fatal. It was iu such cases as these, 

 when men were found lying dead in the field without any external 

 mark of injury, that it was supposed they were suffocated by the ball 

 passing rapidly before their mouths. If the ball penetrates the skin, a 

 ragged opening with its edges inverted, and appearing somewhat 

 smaller than the ball itself, is seen where it entered. The part around 

 has a bluish or black colour from the bruise, and the cellular tissue in 

 the track is seen black and dead. If it has struck a part perpendicu- 

 larly, the ball will most likely enter into it straight ; but if it have 

 struck obliquely, it may be altogether slanted off, as in the preceding 

 cases, or at least its course through the skin will be made more oblique, 

 so that it will fall on the subjacent muscles at a still more acute angle 

 than it did on the surface of the body. Its force, too, being somewhat 

 expended, it will be the less likely to penetrate the dense fascia which 

 usually covers them ; and hence it is often found to have run for a 

 considerable distance beneath the skin, till its force is completely 

 spent, or till, meeting with a greater obstacle to its course onwards 

 than outwards, it passes through the skin again, at a part considerably 

 distant from that at which it entered. Some most remarkable cases of 

 circuitous passages thus produced are recorded. Dr. Hennen mentions 

 one in which the ball entered at the pomum Adami, ran completely 

 round the neck, and was found close by the aperture at which it had 

 penetrated ; and another in which a ball struck the middle of a soldier's 

 arm as he was climbing up a scaling-ladder, passed along the limb, over 

 the back part of the chest, coursed along the abdominal muscles, dipped 

 deep in the buttock, and presented at about the middle of the thigh, on 

 the opposite side to that which it first struck. Sir C. Bell saw two 

 cases in each of which there was one hole in the back, and another 

 above the breast, so that externally they looked almost exactly alike ; 

 but in one case the ball, having struck obliquely, went up over the 

 shoulder, and thence down to the breast ; while in the other it had 

 struck perpendicularly, and had gone straight through the chest. If 

 the ball should penetrate the muscles, each layer that it meets with 

 will render its course more oblique, till striking on the bone it may 

 run for some distance along its surface. If it strikes very obliquely 

 against the walls of a cavity, as the head, chest, or abdomen, its force 

 may be so much expended in passing through them, that it may run 

 for some distance along their concave internal surface, unable to pene- 

 trate the organs contained in them, as in cases mentioned by Dr. 

 Hennen, where balls coursed between the peritoneum and intestines, 

 and in one instance half round the chest between the lung and the con- 

 cave surface of the walls. Similar cases are seen when the ball, striking 

 very obliquely, does not penetrate at all, but runs for some way, even 

 on a concave surface, between the dress and the skin, which it marks 

 by only a slight graze. In these long or circuitous tracks, if the ball 

 have run deep, there will be nothing to indicate the situation at which 

 it has stopped ; but when it has passed near the skin, its course will be 

 marked by a dull bluish or dusky line, or a slight wheal. If it has 

 passed directly into a limb, the most common situation for it to be 

 found in is immediately beneath the skin on the opposite side ; if it 

 strike a bone, it is more likely to be arrested by its cancellous than by 

 its compact tissue : often on passing through either its further course 

 is prevented by the tough resisting tissue of ligaments. In almost all 

 cases in which the ball has penetrated without passing through any 

 part of the body, some foreign substance will be found in the track of 

 the wound ; either the shot alone, or with it portions of clothing, of 

 the contents of the pockets, or cartridge boxes, or even (as in cases 

 given by Dr. Hennen) of the bones of some other person whom the 

 ball had before struck and brought along with it. Sometimes the 

 portion of clothing carried before the ball is not perforated, but driven 

 inwards in the form of a cul-de-sac, which may be drawn out a^ p ;dn 

 with the ball in it. Such a case is related where, in an attempt at 

 suicide, a man fired a pistol close by the side of his head ; the ball 

 passed some depth into the brain, carrying the side of his night-cap 

 before it, so that on taking it off the portion forced into the skull drew 

 out the ball. 



When the ball passes quite through the part, the aperture by which 

 it makes its exit has characters just the reverse of those which we have 

 mentioned as belonging to that by which it entered. Its edges are 

 everted; it looks somewhat larger than the ball, and is less bruised. 

 In these cases no foreign body may be found in the track of the wound, 

 which is generally less circuitous than in the preceding class. Some- 

 times the ball is split by striking against the sharp edge of a bone, or 



