The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1871-11-17
BOLIVAR HARDENAE COUNTY, TENNESSEE, H.
Singular Cases Of Injury to the Hu.
man BOdy.

| sing u1af eases OF INJURY 10 the Hu-
man BOdy.
! A writer in the October number OF
| Old and NeJU has put together sumo
curious stories about the human body
especially those which are illustrated
! in the army museum at Washington.
/ Explaining why he entities his article
! " Broken BOnes,p he says " Broken
! EnglishD was the description once an
! piled by Punch to the victims of rail-
| way accident. When sympathizers
| shipped to the Texan revOlutiOnists
| carefully packed cannon and shell, the
| oils of lading dercribed them as HoI-
( low Ware. So the meanings of words,
| however common in themselves, de-
| pend for force upon their recipient. To
! one man-tO you, it may be, amiabIe
| but prOsaic reader broken bones
may convey nothing, your neighbor
| IN the country may translate it as
| potential fertilizer; to third party it
| may suggest much more than these
! pages can develop"
An exceedingly curious, and, so far
as it indicates the possibilities of na-
ture, instructive specimen, is the fol-
lowing: a soldier was admitted to the
hospital in Baltimore after one of the
Virginia battles, with loss of vision in
the
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. 1t seemed to be one of the
ordinary minor casualties of a battle
that occur, one cannot tell exactly how.
the left eye was slightly prominent,
but It's functions were unim paired.
The wound healed speedily, and the
man was permitted to go about the
city freely on a hospital pass.
More than two months subsequently,
he died after an illness of a few days.
An examination then showed that
cOnOdial ball had entered the skull
through the right eye, and was firmly
lodged close to and directly behind
the left eye, part of whose Lony
| casing was somewhat broken and dis
placed; and that nature had thrown
out new bone sufficiently to plaster it
in It's place, and to nearly entirely
close its Oritice or entrance. The i'm
mediate cause of death was a small
abscess in the brain where its special
covering rested upon the bullet But
this must have existed only toward
the close Of life; and one naturally
inqires, " If a bullet can lie for weeks
without OccasiOning appreciabIe mis-
chief of being suspected, why may it
not do so for months? Who can pre-
scribe the limit of its existence?
SOME PUzzLING INCIDENs
| occasionally happened. One man had
| his arm broken below, and again above
his elbow, by the same bullet; which
appears strange until it was known
that the limb was bent at the time il
was struck. A case may be vouched
f II where one bullet made five OPEN
ings in the skin and did not break a
bone. In another bail lodged in the
upper part of the right thigh, and
several months afterWard it was cut
out from near the left knee. A man
at Mine Run had two pocket-knive es
shattered and driven in his thigh.
! One hundred fragments Of the knives
were removed during life, aud seven
after death, of which there is little
/ doubt that they, and not the bullet,
were the direct cause. At Autietam,
a soldier received q bullet in his
mouth. After the same battle a soldier
! crouched over a loaded shell, cracking
nuts upon it; his caTelessness was fol-
lowed by a speedy explosion and
death,
[AcCluGulS CA Lil1S CndEtAGA6E, ukAG 10
| ignorance or folly, were not frequent
in the war. One is described thus: a
soldier attempted to solve the ques-
| ton whether a shell would 90 off by
/ placing it on one side of a large tree
while he, from the other side, stretched
/ his arm around and struck it with aham-
! mer 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
| huTl upon the ground, a few feet from
/ them, and exploded shell, to decide
! whether it was of the " time" or the
/ percussion" variety. Raw soldiers
are reckless almost beyond belief.
\ LIEUTENANT OF BIOSBY's
command was captured, wounded
near HaTper's Ferry. his right arm
was broken below the shoulder; but
! the bullet, which had not been eX-
! tracted, could not be found. When
/ he died, several weeks afterward, the
( bullet was discovered lodged in the
! spine, one of the bones of which it
| had Eadly broken, below the level Of
! the external wound, where its pres
| ence had not been suspected by himself
or his attendants. II must, of course,
| have struck bis arm when it was extern
| ded in the same line with the back, and
/ have followed its long axis.
When Sedgwick advanced upon
Fredericksburg, in May, 1868, one Of
/ his men fell without experiencing
pain; aud it was found that his thigh
! was broken. He was admitted To the
/ hospital in Washington five days af-
/ teTWarO,
WHEN THERE WAS NO EXTERNAL
WOUND.
of the thigh, and it was presumed
1 that the injury came from a spent
round shot. He died in about six
weeks, and the thigh-bnne was found
brOked and splintered in the middle
with a coHOidal 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 so tortuous that it had col
/ lapsed upon ITSELF and 10 discharge
/ had indicated the track of entrance.
/ A lady writer on the subject Of conf
/ mon sense discOurses as follows:
" II is the kind of talk which sis