ich suggests recoil or splash such as would be
expected from a fluid wave.

Experience of the character of the lesions observed after severe
concussion by the ordinarily somewhat coarser forms of violence common
to civil life, fully explains the severity of the damage to the brain
tissue met with in injuries due to bullets of small calibre. Viewing the
elaborate arrangements which exist for the preservation of the central
nervous system from the moderate vibration incidental to ordinary
existence, it is easy to appreciate the harmfulness of such exquisite
vibratory force as that transmitted by a bullet of small calibre
travelling at a high rate of velocity.

_Effect of ricochet in the production of severe forms of injury._--In
connection with the lesions above described mention must be made of
cases in which the aperture of entry reaches a large size, or a portion
of the skull is actually blown away.

Examples of the former class were not uncommon; I will briefly relate
one.

(48) A Highlander while lying in the prone position at
Rooipoort, was struck by a bullet probably at a distance of
about 1,000 yards. A large entry wound in the scalp was
produced, while the defect in the skull was coarsely comminuted
and was capable of admitting three fingers into a mass of
pulped brain. Both brain matter and fragments of bone were
found in the external wound, which was situated just anterior
to the right parietal eminence. The bullet passed onwards
through the base of the skull, crossing the external auditory
meatus, fracturing the zygoma and probably the condyle of the
mandible, and eventually lodged beneath the masseter muscle.
Blood and brain matter escaped from the external auditory
meatus.

The patient was brought off the field in a semi-conscious
condition, the pupils moderately contracted but equal, the
pulse 66, very small and irregular in beat, the respiration
quiet and easy, and with paralysis of the left side of the
body. The faeces had been passed involuntarily.

The wound was cleansed and bone fragments removed. The patient
had to travel in a wagon for the next three days until the
column halted. The progress of the case was unsatisfactory, as
the wound became infected, and the man eventually died on the
14th day of general septicaemia, but with little evidence of
local extension of septic