CURIOUS CASES OF GUNSHOT WOUNDS.

Mataura Ensign, Volume V, Issue 234, 2 March 1883, Page 5

CURIOUS CASES OF GUNSHOT WOUNDS.

At ' the relief of the Residency of ■ Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the following cases were brought to me. A private of my own regiment who had remarkably prominent eyes and a very flat nose, had both eyes cut open with a bullet which , parsed across them without injuring the nose; ' Another private was struck by 1 a' bullet on the outer edge of the right orbii. It broke the bone and grooved the temple deeply. I dressed thfc wound, and applied a bandage. to keep the dressing in its place, and desired the man to sit down while I attended to other cases. There is an old saying which was in use amongst eailors— namely, " If you wish to. be safe, put. your head into a hole that has been made by a cannon-ball, as the chances are that a second shot, will not strike [ tie came spot." The case of this man, however, was a curious contradiction to the aaying. About an hour after I had dressed his wound I miss, ed him, and as I was making inquiries about him he presented himself,' wounded , a second time, . and ■' fitrange to say, in the very same sppt, the bullet having ripped' up the! toadfige apd the 4reesicg mi eond

siderably enlarged the first wound. It appeared that after the first wound had been dressed, feeling that he had the use of his arms and legs, he slipped quietly away when my back was turned, rejoined his company in the fight, and was wounded almost immediately in the very same spot. A third private was struck by a bullet on the outer edge of the left orbit. The bone was broken, and there was onty a small wound about a quarter of an inch long, on the skin, extending downwards— so small, that I did not think it possible that a bullet could have entered it. The wound healed, and for eight years afterwards the man did his duty. About the end of the eighth year, however, an abscess formed at the spot where he had been wounded ; and on opening it, I observed a small dark body appearing just above the edge of the orbit. At first I thought it was a piece of dfad bone ; but on removing it, found it to be the hsilf of a bullet. It had been lying within the orbital space under the eyeball for eight years. When he was wounded the bullet must have been split on the edge of the bone, one half flying off, and the other half lodging within the orbit. He lost the sight of the eye from the moment that he was wounded, though there was no apparent injury to the organ ; but, strange to say, the half-bullet lying under the eyeball never gave him the least inconvenience ; and he was as much astonished as I was when I removed it and handed it to him. A fourth private a man standing six feet four inches, and with an immense chest and frame, was struck by a bullet on the breastplate, and knocked down, but without being injured, except that " the wind was knocked out of him," as he said himself. How such a huge body could have been knocked down by a musket bullet, was astonishing. — Ohambers's Journal.