Other Causes of Severe Wounds from Bullets

Not all the explosive wounds were caused by gunpowder-filled musket shells. Little understood at the time, though recent research has shed some light on the subject, was the existence of a temporary wound cavity of enormous proportions during the passage of the bullet. This temporary cavity was caused by a transfer of energy from the bullet point tangent to the body, to the fluids of the body. Since water is incompressible, the result is to accelerate the water, hence the flesh, rapidly away from the projectile due to the lighter inertia of the body tissue. This energy imparted to the tissue caused development of a cavity which expanded to many times the size of the bullet, flexing several times as the elasticity of the muscle fibers tried to restrict the cavity against the force of the energy-transferred fluids. The effect was to cause a secondary rending and tearing of the flesh.
The passing of the bullet excavated, by physically destroying flesh equal to the diameter of the bullet. The temporary cavity ruptured blood vessels, extravasted blood, and “pulped” flesh throughout a far greater volume. This pulping or secondary damage from the temporary cavity was proportional to the velocity of the bullet.

Though the truly high velocities of today’s light sporting rifle bullets, pencil-like jacketed pellets of 150-200 grains weight average travelling at 3,000 feet per second, were not approached, the real velocity of the Minie bullet or the long, slender Whitworth sniper slug of .45 caliber were from 20 per cent to 100 per cent higher at termination than the round ball musket projectiles. The wounding effect, though not as extreme as the pulping from a high velocity modem expanding bullet that “spoils too much meat,” as the hunter says, was still terrible by contrast with common experience.
Accusation of being explosive bullets lay with such experience, resulting from improved ballistics of the new weapons. Medical science of the day had no understanding of the phenomenon. Only at the time of the Korean War, by using high speed X-Ray movies of dogs shot with steel bullets at high velocities, has this temporary cavity effect been reduced to understanding. At the time of the Civil War, experience with various kinds of gunshot wounds was slight—indeed, experience in military medicine, and medical personnel, were in short supply.

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The Gatling Gun

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CHAPTER 6 Rifle Muskets: Civil War Scandals

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Civil War Guns

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