OLD FIREARMS AND GUNSHOT WOUNDS.

953 the wound may be enlarged by cutting instruments or by the old now disused instrument called " the dilator," which Schielhans calls the " hole-maker (loucher=locher). The smashing wounds caused by modern projectiles are not contemplated by this old writer, whose picture of a bullet shows us a missile only about three inches in diameter striking a man’s leg. The old field-pieces of that age were rarely very large. One only is represented by von Gersdorff. It is about six feet long and is being used in a battle between men armed an outspoken plea for thoroughness in our surgical with lances. In Francisco Rota’s book on "Gunshot methods. Wounds," published at Bolcgna in 1555, there is a design on the title page representing small fieldOLD FIREARMS AND GUNSHOT WOUNDS. pieces, some of which have solid non-spoked wheels EARLY Arab historians call what is credibly and the arquebuses of the day-huge muskets, believed to have been gunpowder " Chinese snow propped up upon tridents. The arquebus only came " and Chinese’salt," and the Chinese are supposed to be shot from the shoulder after it had been for on good authority to have used explosives and some long shot as a cannon from a stand, as Robinson sort of cannon centuries before the Christian era. Crusoe shot his fusils. The Germans, curiously " Their invention was known as Greek fire" to the enough, are said to have been the first to fire the Byzantine Greeks, then to the Arabs, and it reached arquebus from the shoulder. They are now said, Western Europe in the thirteenth century. Fire- on all hands, to fire from the hip, and it arms have been discussed by many writers from is possible that the arquebus being very heavy the time of Leonardo da Vinci onwards. One of and awkward in make was thus anciently A remarkable point that may here be the early classic authorities on wounds in war, fired. is that the ancient descriptions of the effects is the Hans von noted including gunshot wounds, quaint Gersdorff, whose " Feldtbuch der Wundartzney" of a severe gunshot wound do not differ from those was printed in the ancient free city of Strasburg in in the modern text-books. In both ancient and and again in 1526. Von Gersdorff’s curious recent writers there is the same account of the black-letter pages, written in a German closely I trembling fit, the complaint of cold, the pallor, the resembling the modern Strasbourgeois,have almost a suddenly lowered pulse after a bullet has gone pacifist tendency when compared to the ferocious home. William Clowes holds almost this modern record of modern warfare, with its howitzers built language in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and the into concrete platforms, its holocausts of slaughter dreary theme has been elaborated by the master " and appalling wounds. The Wound Medicine hand of Tolstoi in "War and Peace." We, at the Book" deals largely in rude woodcuts, and we are present, realise all these descriptions to a strange shown a soldier, a rough man suffering great pain, degree. And old von Gersdorff, who wrote of little as the ancient engraver has managed to portray, battles where few fell, on that terrible tortured from whose chest an arrow or bullet is being borderline where now the hugest battle of all time withdrawn by an army surgeon. A soldier holds the is raging, is a notable and sad reminder to us that sufferer by the shoulder to steady him on his three- civilisation since his time has brought its losses as legged stool, while the surgeon, distinguished by well as its gains. black shoes and a slightly more elaborate costume, CHINA TEA. is performing the operation. The patient might be the Valentine of "Faust." The same kind of cut IT is well known, of course, that China tea reappears in William Clowes’s classical work on contains much less tannin than the teas of India surgery in the time of Queen Elizabeth, but the and Ceylon, but, as we have pointed out, if the costumes in this latter case seem to date from the infusion contains theine and tannin in a certain fifteenth century. Von Gersdorff, who, by the bye, neither of these would appear to be present in does not seem to have been a noble, for he rejoiced ratio, the free state. The amount of theine upon which in the peasant nickname of Schielhans, is more the restorative qualities of tea depends in all explicit on the subject of arrow wounds than of three teas is much the same. The existence of gunshot wounds. When the subject has been three kinds of tea enables the consumer to choose wounded by an arrow there are three ways of treatone which suits him, and his judgment is ing him. Either, he says, the shaft must be pulled the based on popular opinion as to flavour. commonly out bodily, which is risky, or driven right The Board of Trade returns show that the through to the other side, which is very fatal, consumption of China tea in the United Kingdom unless some fleshy portion of the patient only is for the first eight months of the present year An arrow through the buttock, for involved. exceeded by 4.000,000 lb. that for the corresponding instance, may be pulled right through. In a third of 1913. Notwithstanding the temporary arrow remains fixed, several period case, when the of the Eastern seas, the supply of China insecurity courses may be adopted. The wound may be we understand, which has reached London is enlarged with a scissors or knife or, better still, it tea, enough to enable the importers to sustain the large be allowed to grow corrupt, when in the may market at normal rates, so that the increasing general softness the arrow-head will come away of number of consumers of China tea will not suffer itself ! In dealing with gunshot wounds the procedure recommended is similar, except that it is not in price. The reason, no doubt, for the increasing of Chinese tea is that the Chinese suggested that the bullet should be pushed through popularity is becoming alive to the need of Government the wounded part. Probing by sounds, and inuncof treating the plant. methods It is modern tions of oil with the hand, are recommended, and picturesque, if nothing else, that there should be in these days to the old1 The Saccular Theory of Hernia and the Radical Operation, a chance of our reverting THE LANCET, Nov. 3rd, 1906, p. 1197. fashioned growths which held their own at the tea

thorough surgery that the only real pathogeny of hernia is that formulated by Mr. R. Hamilton Russell,l who has taught that a preformed sac is the causal factor of hernia ; in complete line with this teaching is Mitchell Banks’s procedure for radical cure-namely, removal of the sac with restoration of the continuous peritoneal surface and protection of the hernial area by closure of the femoral canal. Sir Victor Horsley’s address was* both. a fitting testimonial to a great surgeon and

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