The skin, when it is closely peppered with shot, is liable to lose its vitality, and with the addition of a little sepsis, readily necroses and comes away as a slough.

When the shot have diverged so as to strike singly, they seldom do much harm, but fatal damage may be done to the brain or to the aorta, or the eye may be seriously injured by a single pellet.

Small shot fired at longer ranges—­over about a hundred and fifty feet—­usually go through the skin, but seldom pierce the fascia, and lie embedded in the subcutaneous tissue, from which they can readily be extracted.

The wad of the cartridge behaves erratically:  so long as it remains flat it goes off with the rest of the charge, and is often buried in the wound; but if it curls up or turns on its side, it is usually deflected and flies clear of the shot.  It may make a separate wound.

Wounds from sporting guns are to be treated on the usual lines, the early efforts being directed to the alleviation of shock and the prevention of septic infection.  There is rarely any urgency in the removal of pellets from the tissues.

#Wounds by Rifle Bullets.#—­The vast majority of wounds inflicted by rifle bullets are met with in the field during active warfare, and fall to be treated by military surgeons.  They occasionally occur accidentally, however, during range practice for example, and may then come under the notice of the civil surgeon.

It is only necessary here to consider the effects of modern small-bore rifle or machine-gun bullets.

The trajectory is practically flat up to 675 yards.  In destructive effect there is not much difference between the various high velocity bullets used in different armies; they will kill up to a distance of two miles.  The hard covering is employed to enable the bullet to take the grooves in the rifle, and to prevent it stripping as it passes through the barrel.  It also increases the penetrating power of the missile, but diminishes its “stopping” power, unless a vital part or a long bone is struck.  By removing the covering from the point of the bullet, as is done in the Dum-Dum bullet, or by splitting the end, the bullet is made to expand or “mushroom” when it strikes the body, and its stopping power is thereby greatly increased, the resulting wound being much more severe.  These “soft-nosed” expanding bullets are to be distinguished from “explosive” bullets which contain substances which detonate on impact.  High velocity bullets are unlikely to lodge in the body unless spent, or pulled up by a sandbag, or metal buckle on a belt, or a book in the pocket, or the core and the case separating—­“stripping” of the bullet.  Spent shot may merely cause bruising of the surface, or they may pass through the skin and lodge in the subcutaneous tissue, or may even damage some deeper structure such as a nerve trunk.

A blank cartridge fired at close range may cause a severe wound, and, if charged with black powder, may leave a permanent bluish-black pigmentation of the skin.