When Metal Meets Bone

[Cumpston1862]

Gents-

Some pictures of bones recovered from Civil War sites showing the effects of period projectiles. The skull reportedly belongs to a soldier in the 54th Massachusettes Regiment killed in the Ft. Wagner assault. He was apparently hit by a canister ball (hole looks to small to me) and the other is a leg bone with a obvious minnie ball wound resulting in amputation.

[Jimmayo]

Re: When Metal Meets Bone

I think that hole looks the right size for a canister ball. I am surprised it did not travel through. Pretty gruesome.

[Cumpston1862]

Re: When Metal Meets Bone

I think that hole looks the right size for a canister ball. I am surprised it did not travel through. Pretty gruesome.

After getting home and comparing a minnie and canister ball from my relic collection perhaps it is a canister ball wound. Not sure if you noticed Jim but his skull looks to have been heavily fractured on the back side based on that crack at the top. Very telling and gruesome indeed. Poor guy.

[Jimmayo]

Cannister round.

This is a reconstruction of a 12 lb. canister round. It is beyond imagination what these balls did to the human bodies they impacted upon.

[john duffer]

Re: Cannister round.

In THE CONFEDERACY’S LAST HURRAH, SPRING HILL, FRANKLIN & NASHVILLE, speaking of Captain Baldwin of the 6th Ohio Battery at the Cotton Gin:

‘When only a few paces away, Baldwin’s twelve-pounder Napoleons fired with double charges of canister into their massed ranks. Baldwin said he could hear two sounds: the detonation of the charges and the crunching of bones in front of the muzzles.'

I remember a very similar quote from the Napoleonic wars about the crack of breaking bones but don’t recall where.

[Michael Comer]

Re: When Metal Meets Bone

At least that fellow probably didn't suffer. Most likely never knew what hit him.

[Cumpston1862]

Re: When Metal Meets Bone

We will of course never know for sure what this soldier's exact last moments may have been that day. The fact that he was hit on the side of the head makes me wonder if he flinched at that moment just before impact. Cannonballs, grapeshot and canister had the unique ability once they started to lose momentum to bounce across the ground in almost a playlike fashion. Despite the fact that the projectile was bouncing it was still incredilbly dangerous as period accounts give numerous examples of soldiers trying to stop a bouncing artillery projectile only to be injured or have their gun shattered.

Not sure how many have seen this video of a canister live fire demonstration but if you watch the balls zip over the ground one can visualize the effect on an advancing line of infantry pretty easily.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k86XhYS8GJI

[mtvernon]

Re: When Metal Meets Bone

In my old job as an orthopedic sales rep, most of the job was "covering" surgeries, often for traumatic injuries. We would rod broken bones, or place plates and screws on them, things like that. It occurred to me at that time that amputation during the Civil War, though often attributed to a lack of medical knowledge to contend with the injuries presented suggests that in the modern age we could have saved those extremities. No doubt this is true in many cases, but if you take out the sanitation factor and limit the discussion only to orthopedic injuries, I don't think anything available today could do much more to save a limb than what was available back then (although the knee injury presented above would likely be an exception).

These wounds would be just as devastating today as they were then, and especially after reading accounts of what the medical personnel were able to accomplish back then, my appreciation soars for the herculean accomplishments of those poor surgeons and staff. Read the report sometime of what injuries Chamberlain sustained at Petersburg, and how the doctors treated him. It was absolutely an act of courage on the part of both doctor and patient to have performed the procedures they did.

[Johnny Lloyd]

Re: When Metal Meets Bone

The leg bone didn't heal. The amputation is below the wound. Why is this?

[mtvernon]

Re: When Metal Meets Bone

The leg amputation was above the wound. The left end of the bone as pictured is the upper part of the knee joint, and going right from that point would normally end at the hip. The amputation occurred at about the top of the lower third of the femur.

[lambrew]

Re: When Metal Meets Bone

That may also be an exit wound to the skull. Entrace wounds tend to have a flatter apperance, where as an exit wound will have the concave edges exhibited in the above photo. This is an example I found to show what I mean. The view on the left is the entrance wound, and on the right the exit. Notice the concave edges of the wound to the lower right portion of the occipital region of the skull.

[Johnny Lloyd]

Re: When Metal Meets Bone

The leg amputation was above the wound. The left end of the bone as pictured is the upper part of the knee joint, and going right from that point would normally end at the hip. The amputation occurred at about the top of the lower third of the femur.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]48091[/ATTACH]

Ah, yes. Wow. I stink at anatomy. ;)

[mtvernon]

Re: When Metal Meets Bone

Ah, yes. Wow. I stink at anatomy. ;)

Wait a minute...I found a better picture.

[PMFerringer]

Re: When Metal Meets Bone

We will of course never know for sure what this soldier's exact last moments may have been that day. The fact that he was hit on the side of the head makes me wonder if he flinched at that moment just before impact. Cannonballs, grapeshot and canister had the unique ability once they started to lose momentum to bounce across the ground in almost a playlike fashion. Despite the fact that the projectile was bouncing it was still incredilbly dangerous as period accounts give numerous examples of soldiers trying to stop a bouncing artillery projectile only to be injured or have their gun shattered.

Not sure how many have seen this video of a canister live fire demonstration but if you watch the balls zip over the ground one can visualize the effect on an advancing line of infantry pretty easily.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k86XhYS8GJI

That video is a little sobering when you see the pattern and trajectory of the canister rounds.

[Ambrose Bierce]

Re: When Metal Meets Bone

Not to make this thread overy macabre, it is perhaps even more difficult to imagine living through (and with) such a wound.