A POPULAR FALLACY. OR A PHYSIOLOGICAL FACT: WHICH IS IT ?
on
Sib,?Apropos the effects of
of the
gun-shot
"
INDIAN MEDICAL
GAZETTE." raised in my little paper wounds of the heart, as they were
TO THE EDITOR OF THE
questions
164
THE INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
set forth in your issue of the 1st ultimo, under the heading noted above, I have received a communication from my friend Dr. Sankey of H. M.'s 39th Regiment, which is so pertinent to one of the points under review, that I make no apology for asking you to publish it in full. The letter conveying it reached me too late for embodiment with my contribution as above, and moreover great injuries of the chest and heart are sometimes credited, in popular parlance, witli results which do not really appear to belong to them. To this phase or aspect of the question I would again bespeak the attention of your readers and having now exhausted my acquaintance with the subject, I will not willingly recur to it iu these pages or elsewhere. Answering then some inquiries of mine and after casually dwelling on his recent success in Central India, my friend says:?" As far as my experience goes animals shot through the heart rarely jump into the air, but run a little distance and then fall down dead, I can give you two instances in point, that occurred to me this year. One was shot through the heart, with a large shell, while the other was shot through the aorta close to the heart, and about half the circumference of this vessel was cleanly divided. The first was a tigress that stood about 20 yards from me, the shell went in just behind the right shoulder, passed through both ventricles of the heart and came out behind the other shoulder. The beast did not jump at all, or give any sign, beyond a growl, that she was hit ; all she did was to increase her pace a little ; she ran a little over a 100 yards and then fell down dead. "In the second case, viz. the one that was shot through the 1. shot a tiger with the first bullet through part aorta, B of the shoulder and brisket, with the second as he ran away through the right shoulder and aorta. The tiger gave no sign whatever of being hit and my friend thought he had missed him. However on following up the track, the brute was found dead about 40 or 50 yards ahead of us. I made a post-mortem in both these cases and can vouchfor the truth of what I hate written. "I know the popular belief about the springing, &o., is as you represent it. Even Sir Walter Scott believed it, as is instanced in his " St. Ronan's well," wherein describing a duel between the titular Earl of Etherington anil Mowbray the former, on being shot through the heart, "jumped 6 feet into the air and fell to the ground a dead man." Scores of examples similar to those just derailed might be adduced from equally competent sources, in this country and out of it, and I never heard that the bulls and horses that are so often gored in or stabbed to the heart, at bull-fights in Spain, endeavoured to spring or jump into the air, ere they dropped. We may therefore conclude that, no such tendency, as is here contemplated, is imparted by lead or cold steel to animals ; and a M. Ollivier, who was lately killed, in a duel, in Luxemburg by a sword thrust from his antagonist, which penetrated his heart, merely stood still for a moment or two, then fell forwards a corpse. The other phase or feature of the case, to which reference has been already made, relates to the behaviour of Capt. Nolan under the influence of a fatal chest wound at the battle of Bullaclava; and before entering on the consideration of this, I may immediately mention that Col. G-ardener "received a wound by a bullet in his left breast, at the battle of Preston, which made him give a sudden spring in his saddle" (Scott's tales of a Grandfather, Black's Ed., page 403 ) By no part of Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea has my attention been so much arrested as by his description of the deatti of this officer, and I have never been able to account to myself satisfactorily for the strange, nay, unearthly soream with which it was preceded. But to understand my difficulty it will be necessary to reproduce the passage, and after a few brief comments or questions, I will then leave its further interpretation in the hands of others. After describing his altercation with with Lord CarLord Lucan and subsequent interview digan, Mr. Kinglake adds, Vol. IV, page 257 :?" But a Russian shell, bursting on the right front of Lord Cardigan, which met Nolan full on the now threw out a fragment chest, and tore a way into his heart. The sword dropped from his hand ; but the arm with which he was waving it the moment Defore, still remained high uplifted iu the air the horse all Missing the perfect hand of his master at once wheeled about and began to gallop back upon the front of the advancing brigade. Then from what had been Nolan? and his form was still erect in the saddle, his sword arm still high in the air?there burst forth a cry so strange and appall-
[June 1,
1876.
ing that the hearer who rode the nearest to him has always called it' unearthly.' And in truth, I imagine, the sound resulted from no human will, but rather from those spasmodic forces which may act upon the bodily frame when life, as a power, has ceased. The firm-seated-rider, with arm uplifted and stiff, could hardly be ranked with the living. The shriek, men heard rending the air, was scarce other than the shriek of a corpse." Yet corpses do not shriek in this way at other times, even when similarly dealt with, though appeals to the Deity or ejaculations of horror and surprise are not unfrequently indulged in by persons who are conscious of being fatally stricken ; and one would rather look for paralysis of the muscles cf the chest, or collapse of the lung, from such a terrible stroke, than for ' those spasmodic forces' to which reference has been made, or to that ' catalepsy-like stiffness' to which he had previously (Vol III, p 3) ascribed the statuesque and lifelike attitude of many of those who were killed at the Alma. However that a may be, the phenomenon was certainly very strange one, and seems to me to be scarcely reconcileable with either of the theories, of pain, shock, or spasm, to which it has been variously ascribed. My own impression has always been that this wild scream was the result of an expiring effort to recall the column from the direction it had taken?the effect of that ' Lightening before Death' which, the poet tells us, speeds the departure of many a troubled spirit?that enabled him to see the error he had committed and induced him to try and rectify it as far as he could. This too appears to be confirmed by the course he was taking at the time, across the front of the ad' vancing column, turning round in his saddle and shouting and waving his sword as though he would address the brigade.' But on these points my readers are as competent to pronounce as I am, the data on which my impressions are based are as open to them as they are to me, and again expressing it as my opinion, that the belief in the jumping or springing tendency imparted by gun-shot or other wounds of the heart, to man and animals, is a popular fallacy rather than a physiological fact, I now finally bring my connexion with the question to a close. I am, &c., W. CUBBAN.
on
Sib,?Apropos the effects of
of the
gun-shot
"
INDIAN MEDICAL
GAZETTE." raised in my little paper wounds of the heart, as they were
TO THE EDITOR OF THE
questions
164
THE INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
set forth in your issue of the 1st ultimo, under the heading noted above, I have received a communication from my friend Dr. Sankey of H. M.'s 39th Regiment, which is so pertinent to one of the points under review, that I make no apology for asking you to publish it in full. The letter conveying it reached me too late for embodiment with my contribution as above, and moreover great injuries of the chest and heart are sometimes credited, in popular parlance, witli results which do not really appear to belong to them. To this phase or aspect of the question I would again bespeak the attention of your readers and having now exhausted my acquaintance with the subject, I will not willingly recur to it iu these pages or elsewhere. Answering then some inquiries of mine and after casually dwelling on his recent success in Central India, my friend says:?" As far as my experience goes animals shot through the heart rarely jump into the air, but run a little distance and then fall down dead, I can give you two instances in point, that occurred to me this year. One was shot through the heart, with a large shell, while the other was shot through the aorta close to the heart, and about half the circumference of this vessel was cleanly divided. The first was a tigress that stood about 20 yards from me, the shell went in just behind the right shoulder, passed through both ventricles of the heart and came out behind the other shoulder. The beast did not jump at all, or give any sign, beyond a growl, that she was hit ; all she did was to increase her pace a little ; she ran a little over a 100 yards and then fell down dead. "In the second case, viz. the one that was shot through the 1. shot a tiger with the first bullet through part aorta, B of the shoulder and brisket, with the second as he ran away through the right shoulder and aorta. The tiger gave no sign whatever of being hit and my friend thought he had missed him. However on following up the track, the brute was found dead about 40 or 50 yards ahead of us. I made a post-mortem in both these cases and can vouchfor the truth of what I hate written. "I know the popular belief about the springing, &o., is as you represent it. Even Sir Walter Scott believed it, as is instanced in his " St. Ronan's well," wherein describing a duel between the titular Earl of Etherington anil Mowbray the former, on being shot through the heart, "jumped 6 feet into the air and fell to the ground a dead man." Scores of examples similar to those just derailed might be adduced from equally competent sources, in this country and out of it, and I never heard that the bulls and horses that are so often gored in or stabbed to the heart, at bull-fights in Spain, endeavoured to spring or jump into the air, ere they dropped. We may therefore conclude that, no such tendency, as is here contemplated, is imparted by lead or cold steel to animals ; and a M. Ollivier, who was lately killed, in a duel, in Luxemburg by a sword thrust from his antagonist, which penetrated his heart, merely stood still for a moment or two, then fell forwards a corpse. The other phase or feature of the case, to which reference has been already made, relates to the behaviour of Capt. Nolan under the influence of a fatal chest wound at the battle of Bullaclava; and before entering on the consideration of this, I may immediately mention that Col. G-ardener "received a wound by a bullet in his left breast, at the battle of Preston, which made him give a sudden spring in his saddle" (Scott's tales of a Grandfather, Black's Ed., page 403 ) By no part of Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea has my attention been so much arrested as by his description of the deatti of this officer, and I have never been able to account to myself satisfactorily for the strange, nay, unearthly soream with which it was preceded. But to understand my difficulty it will be necessary to reproduce the passage, and after a few brief comments or questions, I will then leave its further interpretation in the hands of others. After describing his altercation with with Lord CarLord Lucan and subsequent interview digan, Mr. Kinglake adds, Vol. IV, page 257 :?" But a Russian shell, bursting on the right front of Lord Cardigan, which met Nolan full on the now threw out a fragment chest, and tore a way into his heart. The sword dropped from his hand ; but the arm with which he was waving it the moment Defore, still remained high uplifted iu the air the horse all Missing the perfect hand of his master at once wheeled about and began to gallop back upon the front of the advancing brigade. Then from what had been Nolan? and his form was still erect in the saddle, his sword arm still high in the air?there burst forth a cry so strange and appall-
[June 1,
1876.
ing that the hearer who rode the nearest to him has always called it' unearthly.' And in truth, I imagine, the sound resulted from no human will, but rather from those spasmodic forces which may act upon the bodily frame when life, as a power, has ceased. The firm-seated-rider, with arm uplifted and stiff, could hardly be ranked with the living. The shriek, men heard rending the air, was scarce other than the shriek of a corpse." Yet corpses do not shriek in this way at other times, even when similarly dealt with, though appeals to the Deity or ejaculations of horror and surprise are not unfrequently indulged in by persons who are conscious of being fatally stricken ; and one would rather look for paralysis of the muscles cf the chest, or collapse of the lung, from such a terrible stroke, than for ' those spasmodic forces' to which reference has been made, or to that ' catalepsy-like stiffness' to which he had previously (Vol III, p 3) ascribed the statuesque and lifelike attitude of many of those who were killed at the Alma. However that a may be, the phenomenon was certainly very strange one, and seems to me to be scarcely reconcileable with either of the theories, of pain, shock, or spasm, to which it has been variously ascribed. My own impression has always been that this wild scream was the result of an expiring effort to recall the column from the direction it had taken?the effect of that ' Lightening before Death' which, the poet tells us, speeds the departure of many a troubled spirit?that enabled him to see the error he had committed and induced him to try and rectify it as far as he could. This too appears to be confirmed by the course he was taking at the time, across the front of the ad' vancing column, turning round in his saddle and shouting and waving his sword as though he would address the brigade.' But on these points my readers are as competent to pronounce as I am, the data on which my impressions are based are as open to them as they are to me, and again expressing it as my opinion, that the belief in the jumping or springing tendency imparted by gun-shot or other wounds of the heart, to man and animals, is a popular fallacy rather than a physiological fact, I now finally bring my connexion with the question to a close. I am, &c., W. CUBBAN.
