Excerpt from On the Fractures of Bones Occurring in Gun-Shot Injuries; On Resection in Gun-Shot Injuries; Cases of Resection in Civil Practice: Observations and Experience in the Schleswing-Holstein Campaigns of 1848 to 1851; On Tonic Treatment Throughout

The spot struck by the ball is colorless and exsanguine in its circumference appears the commencement of a line of demarkation. Contusions of this kind, which, up to the present time have been little attended to in the long bones, are well known in the bones of the skull; where caused by a blow or fall, they have the same dangerous consequences if not properly treated, as suppuration occurs in the diploe and purulent inflammation in the sinus, with its usual results. Such contusions also occur in the cranial bones if a bullet strikes at a right angle, of which I have seen many exam ples, where it could be determined from the character of the wound in the soft parts that the same had been so struck, without causing fracture or depression of the bone.

Usually, however, such contusions of the cranial bones arise from grazing shots, in which the bullet strikes in a more or less obtuse angle, pursues its course for a certain distance on the skull, partly tears off, partly bruises the pericranium, and leaves behind one or more slight depressions of the outer table. These depressions often lie at some little dis tance from one another, so that it seems as if the bullet had sprung over a part of the skull; this it might easily do, if striking at an obtuse angle it should cause a slight turning of the head, rebound, and immediately after strike the skull at some other point. I have a preparation which shows this action of the bullet very plainly. In these cases the tabula vitrea is generally splintered. Upon this, see In juries of the Head.

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