rtainly present, to locate
it exactly is often very difficult; and even after an incision has been
made, though it may be embedded in a hand or foot, it is no easy task to
find it.

[Illustration: FIGURE 9.--SKIAGRAPH OF A HUMAN FOOT, SHOWING THE
DEFORMITY IN THE LAST TWO TOES CAUSED BY TIGHT BOOTS.

(Skiagraphed by Mr. Sydney Rowland, and published in the "British
Medical Journal.")]

The new method is a great step in advance in the line of precision of
diagnosis, and, therefore, of correct treatment. About half a dozen
cases have already been reported in the medical journals in which a
needle was suspected to be in the hand or the foot, and, in some
instances, had been sought for fruitlessly by a surgeon, in which the
use of the X rays demonstrated absolutely, not only its presence, but
its exact location, and it has then been an easy matter to extract it.
So, too, in an equal number of cases, bullets and shot have been
located, even after a prior fruitless search, and have been successfully
extracted. Figure 6 is the skiagraph of the hand of a cadaver which
shows a needle deeply embedded in the thumb, and also two buck-shot,
which were inserted into the palm of the hand through two incisions. It
will be noticed that their denser shadow is seen even _through the
bones_ of the hand themselves, for the hand was skiagraphed palm
downward.

Professor von Bergmann of Berlin has uttered, however, a timely warning
upon this very point. In many cases, after bullets or shot have been
embedded in the tissues for any length of time, they become quite
harmless. They are surrounded with a firm capsule of gristly substance
which renders them inert. In 1863, soon after I graduated in medicine, I
remember very well assisting the late Professor S.D. Gross in extracting
a ball from the leg of a soldier who had been wounded at the Borodino,
during Napoleon's campaign in Russia. It lay in the leg entirely
harmless for almost fifty years, and then became a source of irritation,
and was easily found and removed. There are many veterans of the Civil
War now living with bullets embedded in their bodies which are doing no
harm; and there is not a little danger that in the desire to find and
remove them greater harm may be done by an operation than by letting
them alone.

Glass is, fortunately, quite opaque to the Roentgen rays, and it will be
of great service to the patient, if the surgeon shall be able, by
skiagraphing the hand, to de