7th.—Strength slowly but gradually returning. The action of the large intestines is daily kept up by stimulating injections.
14th.—Progress to recovery satisfactory. The injections are daily repeated, and the discharge by the natural passage increases. The wound contracts and looks healthy. Is enabled to sit up, and has recovered his cheerfulness.
28th.—Still improving; ultimately recovered.
The situation of the ball was never ascertained.
A soldier of la Jeune Garde Imperiale was struck by a ball, which entered to the right and a little below the umbilicus and passed out on the left or opposite side, about two inches above the crest of the ilium. It was supposed to have passed along the canal of the great arch of the colon. Fecal matter, much tinged with bile, passed by both openings. The symptoms of inflammation were severe for the first few days, but gradually yielded to the means employed, when the bowels began to act regularly by the aid of mild injections, and the discharge from the wounds gradually lessened; the man was much reduced, but otherwise in good health, and was sent to France from Brussels, nearly well.
A soldier of the Third Division of Infantry was wounded during the assault of Ciudad Rodrigo, by a ball which entered and lodged in the left side of the back, about midway between the spine and a line drawn to the upper part of the crest of the ilium, from which opening the contents of the bowel were discharged. Left among the dead and those who were supposed to be dying at the field hospital, in the rear of the trenches, I sent him, with all those of different corps who were wounded, to my own hospital at Aldea Gallega, some ten miles off. Here, under a sufficiently vigorous treatment, of which bleeding, starvation, and quietude were the prominent features, he gradually recovered. On the fifth day the ball passed per anum, and on two or three different occasions afterward portions of his coat, flannel shirt, and breeches. Fecal matter passed readily through the wound, while the bowels were gently solicited by common injections for some time; but the wound gradually closed in, and the man regained his health, and was sent to the rear with a slight colored discharge from the wound, not quite free from odor.
Ensign Wright, 61st Regiment, was wounded by a musket-ball, on the morning of the 10th of April, at Toulouse. The ball passed through the abdominal parietes on the right of the linea alba, nearly half way betwixt the umbilicus and the pubes, and lodged. Sense of debility, tremor, nausea, small, feeble pulse, and pain in the lower part of the abdomen were the immediate symptoms.
Peritonitic and enteritic symptoms of considerable violence having begun to manifest themselves on the 11th, copious and repeated evacuations of blood were made by order of Mr. Guthrie, the Deputy Inspector-General in charge of all the wounded. Fomentations were applied to the belly; abstinence in food and drink was strictly enjoined, and the most rigid antiphlogistic regimen followed. The same practice was pursued during the 12th, 13th, and 14th, venesection being performed either two or three times every day, as the augmented state of the local and general inflammatory symptoms seemed to require. The bowels during the above period had continued perfectly free, and the dejections were tolerably natural in color, but rather dark, and extremely fetid. He had been frequently troubled with nausea and vomiting of bilious matter. Two small doses of castor-oil had been exhibited.
Toast and water, tea, boiled milk-and-water, with a little soft bread soaked in it, and mutton and chicken-broth in small quantities at a time, were all that was allowed him for food and drink.
April 15th.—Pulse above 100, weak and small; temperature natural; the tongue clean. Continued affected with a degree of nausea and vomiting, after drinks especially; and some diarrhœa was present.