Show SMALL BULLET WOUNDS the Deadly Effects of Modern Projectiles Upon the Human Body Tho celebrated English surgeon Professor Pro-fessor Victor Hereby read a very interesting in-teresting papor before the Royal institution insti-tution on the effect of modern small projectiles In tho course of his remarks I he said Some people seem to think that a small bullet at a very high speed L will pierce the tissues of the body without with-out doing much general damage This however is erroneous The bullet hurries I hur-ries forward with it particles of the substance through which it is passing and thus practically becomes a larger projectile If a bullet be fired through I a book it cuts out disks of increasing diameter as it traverses the pages Hence too it is plain that the greater the sectional area the greater the damage dam-age As to the heating of the bullet it has certainly been much exaggerated and its effects if indeed it has any may be safely neglected Tho physical constitution of a body has a most important bearing upon the I behavior of a bullet entering it Why does a bullet of certain size and traveling travel-ing at a certain rate simply perforate I some substances such as wood or iron while in others such as clay brain etc it exercises a bursting and disruptive disrup-tive action The answer is quite simple sim-ple the destructive effects vary directly direct-ly as the viscosity of the body I This WI1S established by some remarkable remark-able researches on the effects of bullets Ion I-on soft tissues made by Hngnier after ho had observed the results of the i wounds inflicted in the fighting in Paris in 184P He eusrirested from observa tious made on certain dead organs such as lungs that the reason of the great lateral disturbance was that the tissues contained water in large quantity and that the energy of the moving projectile projec-tile being imparted to the particles ot water caused the dispersion of these in a hydrodynamic fashion This suggestion was shown to be correct cor-rect by Kocher in 18746 If ashbt be fired through two tin canisters equal size the one full of dry lint and the other of wet it will simply perforate the former but cause tho latter to burst explosively In the same way shots fired into dough have more or less disruptive effect according to the percentage of water in the dough and in general tho more fluid the substance the greater th destruction Now in life the brain is a more or less fluid body though in a state of rigoJ mortis it is practically a solid owing to coagulation of the blood and protoplasm proto-plasm Hence a shot fired into the skull must have a disruptive effect and tend to burst it |