Outlines of medical jurisprudence : intended to promote the studies of the medical and law students who attend his lectures / by Henry Howard.

  • Howard, Henry, 1792-1874.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Outlines of medical jurisprudence : intended to promote the studies of the medical and law students who attend his lectures / by Henry Howard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    hand, it should be inquired whether the deceased were left handed. In wounds by balls, it has been generally held that the en- trance wound is smaller than the exit. But Professor Malle says from many experiments on the dead body, and frequent examinations of the wounded, living body, exactly the reverse obtains.* The entrance wound has its edges inverted and de- pressed : while the exit wound has ragged, everted and une- ven edges, and the same obtains in flat bones. Considerable discrepancy exists among writers on Medical Jurisprudence in relation to the size of the wound made by a ball, when compared with the ball. Some of them staling that the perforation, even in bones, is of the same size as the ball, others saying it is much greater: and a case has been published by Dr. Post of New York,t in which he says a per- foration made by a rifle ball through the parietal bone, was smaller than the ordinary rifle ball. Perhaps all this dis- crepancy may be reconciled by ascertaining that balls project- ed from the common musket, and all smooth bore guns, the rifle longitudinally grooved, and the rifle spirally grooved, make per- forations different from each other. Professor Stoughton says : The motion of a musket ball (independently of its pro- jectile course) on its own axis is at right angles with its direc- tion. Hence, when a musket ball strikes the flesh, the hole made is smaller, to all appearance than the ball itself. The barrel of the American rifle, on the other hand, is grooved, not in a longitudinal direction, as the French and German rifles, but in a spiral manner. The ball is forced down so tightly that as it passes out, it is under the necessity of following the spiral groove. This imparts to it a motion on its axis, corres- ponding with the direction o( its course. Hence the ragged hole, which our hunters know so well, is always much larger than the ball. Hence the rifle ball, at full momentum, does not, like the musket ball, remove a cylinder of muscle and bone, but its rotary motion, tears the flesh and shatters the bone. Hence too, unless the ball is nearly spent, it never glances.11 Dupuytren attempts to reconcile the discrepancy as follows: When the gun has been discharged close to the wounded part, the opening by which the ball enters is smaller than that * Anniilis d' Hygiene, April, 1810, and Hay's Journal, Oct., 1841, p. 505. t Hay's Journal, April, 1811, p 544.