passing from one flank to the other were very dangerous, as
crossing complicated coils of the small intestine, and two fixed
portions of the colon. This danger was most marked when the wounds were
situated between the eighth rib in the mid axillary line and the crest
of the ilium; above this level the liver, or possibly liver and stomach,
were sometimes alone implicated, and the cases did well. Again, when the
wounds crossed the false pelvis the patients sometimes escaped all
injury to viscera.

2. Antero-posterior wounds in the small intestine area were very fatal
if the course was direct; in such the small intestine seldom escaped
injury.

3. Wounds with a certain degree of obliquity from anterior wall to
flank, or from flank to loin, were on the other hand comparatively
favourable, as the small intestine often escaped, and if any gut was
wounded, it was often the colon.

4. Vertical wounds implicating the chest and abdomen, or the abdomen and
pelvis, were on the whole not very unfavourable. For instance, when the
bullet entered by the buttock and emerged below the umbilicus, a number
of patients escaped fatal injury; this depended on the comparatively
good prognosis in wounds of the rectum and bladder. A good many
patients in whom the bullet entered by the upper part of the loin, and
escaped 1-1/2 inch within the anterior superior spine of the ilium, also
did well. The same holds good when the wounds either entered or emerged
under the anterior costal margin of the thorax, either prior to or after
traversing the thorax.

Wounds passing directly backward from the iliac regions were in my
experience very unfavourable; but I believe mainly as a result of
haemorrhage from the iliac arteries.

_The occurrence of wounds of the abdomen of an 'explosive'
character._--The vast majority of the abdominal wounds observed in the
Stationary or Base hospitals were of the type dimensions. A certain
number of the abdominal injuries which proved fatal on the field or
shortly afterwards were described as explosive in character, and were
referred by the observers to the employment of expanding bullets.

A few words on this subject seem necessary, because it seems doubtful
whether such injuries could be produced by any of the forms of expanding
bullet of small calibre in use, unless the track crossed one of the
bones in the abdominal or pelvic wall. That this was sometimes the case
there is no doubt: thus I saw two cases in which