WOUNDS FROM FIRE-ARMS., 137 
IV. 
WOUNDS FROM FIRE-ARMS. (GUN-SHOT WOUNDS). 
Particularly frequent among army horses and hunting dogs, these 
wounds vary indefinitely with the size and the penetrating force of the 
agents which produce them. How different, as far as lesions and 
severity, the contusion produced by a dead ball, the burn resulting from 
the deflagration of the powder, the narrow perforations of small shot, 
from the enormous mutilations made by big projectiles! And how 
numerous are the intermediate degrees between those extremes. The 
wounding agent may be a regular projectile or a fragment of a small 
bomb, a metallic substance with a sharp edge ora splinter of wood 
torn by the projectile. If the latter penetrates the tissues, it may in- 
troduce into them a foreign body—a fragment of metal, a piece of 
leather or of cloth. 
Penetrating wounds involve injured bones in about a fifth of the 
cases. Out of 211 wounds by fire-arms observed by Jewsejenko during 
the Russo-Turkish war, 41 (19%) were complicated with bony lesions 
{bones of the head, 12 cases ; vertebra, ribs, pelvis, 14 ; anterior legs, 
7; hind legs, 5; foot, 3). The most serious lesions were those made 
by lead projectiles. 
Wounds by fire-arms are generally characterized by their peculiar 
aspect ; their borders, of leaden tint, brown, purple, or blackish, are 
contused and ragged. Wounds made with modern arms differ much 
from those made with ancient projectiles. The Lebel ball, conical, 
with a very hard metallic envelope, has a considerable penetrating force ; 
it runs through the tissues in a straight line and perforates and crushes 
bones into splinters. The curious deviations observed from the spher- 
ical balls of old guns, the “ turning” shots, are exceptional with the 
projectiles of modern warfare. 
The therapeutics of these wounds has varied with the times. Old 
surgery believed them “ poisoned” and recommended cauterization 
with the red iron or boiling oil. Later, free incisions and immediate 
extraction of the projectiles was the rule. To-day, they are treated as 
contused wounds are treated, and when the wounding agent has remained 
in the tissues, most commonly it is left there. 
In animals, since the skin is protected by an abundant coat of hair, 
it is rarely affected by burns from gunpowder; and the incrustation in 
the skin of some of it which had not burnt is without importance. 
The eye may, however, be severely affected (Rey, Kopp). Upon a 
horse which, at Montebello, had remained some time near the mouth 
of a piece of artillery which was firing, Kopp observed, the next day, 
