Rifle—Plate 5.
HEAD.
Gunshot Fracture of the Body of Lower Jaw, with Great Fragmentation and Displacement.
Wound of entrance, to the left side of the median line of the lower jaw below the alveolar process, with course ranging downward and backward.
Wound of exit, with extensive laceration, beneath lower border of the bone.
The wound was caused by a rifle bullet at high velocity at or less than mid range. The fragments are many and rather small, so that much bone was lost through the wound of exit. This effect was produced by the splitting due to the relative friability of the bone and to the imparting of the momentum of the missile to the detached fragments, which, together with the missile, effected the considerable laceration of the wound of exit.
Treatment, difficult; guided by septic conditions and surgical means available.
Results in such cases are favorable to life but topically unsatisfactory.
SPINAL REGION.
Plate 6.
