In instances the contents were deeply perforated, and death followed in It would thus appear that, with M. Legouest mentions, in a communication he has been good enough to send me, 6 cases of penetrating wounds of the chest, as having occurred in his division of the Dolma Batchi hospital at Constantinople, and of the half du;d. Al->ck gives to l/8, as the mortality attending his cases of perforating gun-shot wounds of the thorax. In Guthrie's 106 cases, of whom a half perished, " the cavities were not pvnc ated." In the documents of the medical department I have found a record Of Tin: FACI: AND CTIF.ST. all our boasted improvements in the method of investigating the effects and progress of injuries of the In mortality lias not abated much from what it lias when laruv numbers of mrn have sustaiiu-.il injury tn--.ii gun-shot.
'.inon in hattl tants arc in close.imity. This WM particularly the case in the civil in Paris: and in siege operations the same holds good. The large surface, and elevated position of the thorax, accounts in some measure for this. distinction usually made between wounds of the tes. and those which penetrate and injure tl. of the cavity, is evidently a good one, as it sep:. Ml of injuries of very dillerent import. nple contusion of the walls may lie caused spent ball, or by a ball which has impinged against some part of the soldier's accoutrements, and hathus been ing. Such an injury, alth. not accompanied by any fracture, may yet be sufficient iae to In!s, severe constitutional shock, and I inflammation.
It' the hall strike the of an metal plates which form part of the soldier's accon the injury to the contents may binflicl.-d by the part BO struck, as was th-Case in the foil-'imd shot was the miseverity of the injury litl I by of 89 CAMS in which the chest wu penetrated, and in balls. H of thene there were signs < -mtents. Of these 89 cases, 27 died and 12 recovered. V of by gun-shot, many of them affected at very snort range. All very soon after being wounded. wlii. h h. also mentions recorered, in nil f Tin: < I;LMI;AN v the symptoms before death. Darling, private, Gist i. was liit at Sadoolapore by a round shot, on tinedge of the breast-plate, which was so turned inwards as to fracture the cartilages of the fifth, sixth, and seventh ribs on the left side, close to the sternum.
The skin was not wounded. He walked to the rear, and complained but little for two hours, when he was seized with an acute pain in the region of the heart. His pulse became much accelerated, and he grew faint and collapsed. A distinct and sharp bellows'-sound accompanied the heart's action. He died in seventy-two hours from the receipt of the injury the pain and dyspnoea, which had been so urgent at first, having abated for some hours before death. The heart was found to have been ruptured to an extent sufficient to allow of the finger being thrust into the left ventricle. The obliquity of the opening had prevented the blood escaping into the pericardium, which contained about two ounces of darkcoloured serum.