SOME DIE: OTHERS LAUGH.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue XV, 14 April 1900, Page 699

SOME DIE: OTHERS LAUGH.

If you take a dozen soldiers as like each other ns peas so far as height, weight, strength, age. courage, ami general a| .'pea ranee. and wound them all in precisely the same way. you will find that scarcely any two of them are affected alike. One man on icaching a bullet in his leg will go on tight ng as if noth ing had happened. II? does not know, in fact, that he now contains a bullet. But perhaps in two or thiee minutes he will grow faint and fall. Another man. without feeling tin* slightest pain, w II tremble all over, totter, and fall at once. even though the wound is really very slight. A third will cry out in a way to frighten his comrades, and will Luge t everything in his agony. \ fourth w’ll grow stupid and look like an idiot. Some soldiers wounded in the slightest manner will have to he carried off the field. Others, although perhaps fatally injured, can easilx walk to the ambulance. Many die quickly from t hi* shock to the nervous system. A very curious case is recorded n the surgical history of th.* American Civil War. in wnich three officers were hit just at the same time. One had his leg from the knee down carried away, but he rode ten in'les to the hospital. Another lost his little linger, and he became a raving lunatic. While a third was shot through the body, and, though he did not shed a drop of blood externally, dropped dead from the shock.