The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1871-10-26
Singular Cases Of Injury to the Human
BOdv,


Body
A writer in the October number of
old and Neao has put together some Curl
ous stories about injuries to the human
body-espeoiall those which are illus
trated in the Army Museum at. Wash
ington. Explaining why be entities his
article "" Broken Bones" he says:
Broken English was the description
once applied by Punch to the victims OF
a railway accident. When sympathizers
shipped to the Texan revolutionists
carefully packed cannon and shell, the
bills of 1ading described them as Hollow
Ware. So the meaning of words, how
ever common in themselves, depend for
their force upon the recipient. To one
man, to you it may be, amiable but
prosaic reader, broken bones may
convey nothing; your neighbor in the
country may translate it as potential
fertilizer; to third party it may sug-
gest more than these pages can develop"
An exceedingly curious, and, so far
as it indicates the possibilities of Nature,
instructive specimen, is the following:
A soldier was admitted to the hospital
in Baltimore after one of the. Virginia
battles, with loss of vision in the
, .aas RIGHT EYE,
although the external injury to the or
gan was not remarkable. He could give
no special account of the wound, or of
the course or character of the missile.
It seemed to be one of the ordinary
minor casualties of battle that occur,
one cannot tell exactly how. The left
eye was slightly prominent, but its func-
tions were unimpared. The wound
healed speedily, and the man was per-
mitted to go about the city freely on
hospital pass. .#...
More than two months subsequently
he died after an illness of few days.
An examination then showed that
conoidal ball had entered the skull
through the right eye, and was firmly
lodged close to and directly behind the
left eye, q part of whose bony casing
was somewhat broken and displaced
and that nature had thrown out new
bone sufficiently to plaster it in its place,
and to nearly close its orifice of entrance.
The immediate cause of death was
small abscess in the brain where its
special covering rested upon the bullet.
Bat this must have existed only toward
the close of life; and one naturally in
quires, eff bullet can lie for weeks
without occssioning sppreciable mis-
chief or being suspected, why may it
not do 80 for months Who can pre-
scribe the limits of its existencep
SOME PUZZL1NG INCIDENTS
occasionally happened. One man had
his arm broken below, and again above
his elbow, by the same bullet; which
appears strange, until it is known that
the limb was bent at the time it was
struck. A case may be vouohed for
where one bullet made five openings in
the skin and did not break bone. In
another ball lodged in the upper part
of the right thigh, and, several months
afterwsrd, it was cut out from near the
left knee A man at Mine Run had two
pocket-knives shattered and driven into
his thigh. One hundred fragments of
the knives were removed during life,
and seven after death, of which there is
little doubt that they, and not the bull
let, were the direct cause. At Antietam,
q soldier received bullet in his open
mouth. After the same battle soldier
crouched over loaded shell, crack
ing nuts upon it; his carelessness
was followed by speedy explosion and
death.
Accidents of this character, due to ig-
norance or folly, were not unfrequent in
the war. One is described thus: A
soldier attempted to solve the question
whether a shell would go off, by placing
it on one side of large tree while he
from the other side, stretched his arm
around and struck it with hammer,
expecting to withdraw his hand quickly
enough to avoid injury. The shell and
the arm both went off. The writer once
saw two infantry soldiers, in front OF
Richmond, pick up and hurl upon the
ground, a few feet from them, an unex-
ploded shell, to decide whether it was oi
the I" time" or the percussion variety
Raw soldiers are reckless almost beyond
belief.
LIEUTENANT OF MosDY'S
command was captured, wounded. near
Harper's Ferry. His right arm was
broken below the shoulder but the bull
let, which had not been extracted, could
not be found. When he died, several
weeks afterwsrd, the bullet was discov-
cred lodging in the spine, one of the
bones of which it had badly broken, be.
low the level of the external wound
where its presence had not been suspect
ed by himself or his attendants. 1t must
of course, have struck his arm when il
was extended in the same line with the
back, and have followed its long axis.
When Sedgwick advanced upon Fred
ericksburg, in May, 1868, one of his men
fell without experiencing pain; and il
was found that his thigh was broken
He was admitted to hospital in Washing.
ton, five days afterward, when
THERE WAS NO EXTERNAL WOUND
of the thigh, aud it was presumed that
the injury came from spent round
shot. He died in about six weeks an6
the thigh-bone was found broker
and splintered in the middle with 6
conoidsl bullet, itself partly split
lodged. A small wound, that had long
been closed, was found near the knee
and the course of the ball had been sc
tortuous that it had collapsed upon it
self, and no discharge had indicated the