Medical Jurisprudence And Toxicology

218

MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE

direct through the body without any deflection or deviation, and without
causing much damage. The wounds of entry and exit are almost circular
and similar in appearance without any bruising or laceration of the
surrounding parts. Such wounds also heal very rapidly. Even the wounds
caused by such bullets in the brain, lungs, or intestines often run a perfectly
normal course, and heal without any difficulty.

Expanding, grooved, Dum-dum bullets are very destructive in charac-
ter, and produce extensive wounds with ragged margins.

Fragments of shell are also destructive and cause extensive wounds.

Irregular missiles, such as pieces of stone, iron, kankar, beads of brass
or nickel anklets or wristlets, seeds, etc., used in muzzle-loading guns
produce several irregular, lacerated wounds, and the exit wounds are larger
than the entrance wounds. It is possible for a single pellet of shot to cause
death.

In one ease several kankars penetrated the lungs of an old woman who was shot
with a muzzle-loading gun. The woman died of gangrene of the lungs after three
months in Lady Lyall Hospital at Agra. In another case, a woman, 50 years old, was
shot by dacoits. There were three gunshot wounds on the right side of the chest
internal to the right nipple, and on dissection four small kankars were found embedded
in the right lung and in the right ventricle of the heart. In a third case an old man
received a charge of shot in the left side of the chest from a gun fired by a dacoit, and
died immediately. On dissection a pellet of shot was found lodged in the pericardial
sac having traversed the right chamber of the heart in its lower part.

A B

Fig. S2L—T A. Entrance, B. Exit, wounds of a revolver bullet in skull bones. The edges
of the entrance -wound are clean-cut, while those of the exit wound are bevelled

externally.

OK gunpowder may cause frightful laceration and may produce
penetrating the internal organs of the body even if a blank
is discharged close to the body.

ci fi&grojecffle.-^A bullet travelling at high velocity produces
a clean,, circular, punched-out aperture or slit as in a stabbing wound, and
usually perforates tie body. It is not deflected from its path by striking
a bone, but may cause its comminution or splintering. On thp other hand,
a bullet of low velocity fcause$ contusion and laceration of the margins of
the wounds of eotem&e. It is easily deflected and deformed by striking
some hard object, aui oftem lodges in the body. Ife track made by a bullet
widens as it goes <feg^erfc >|^ls is iJie reverse of a punctured wound.

Distance of the Kr^^— Ha^ prearm is disc%rg4; ve
body or in actual contact, stite|^eous tissues over :

close to the
two oar three