Private Jesse Lockhurst, 31st Regiment, aged twenty-six, was wounded in the advanced trenches, 17th of August, 1855.
August 17th.—Six o’clock A.M., carried into regimental hospital, having received an extensive lacerated wound of right cheek: very little apparent hemorrhage, but the power of deglutition was completely lost, and respiration impeded. On making an examination of the wound, it was ascertained that the right superior maxillary bone was fractured, and a portion of the hard palate with the molar teeth driven in on the tongue; there was a large piece of shell or shot lodged at the bottom of the wound, lying on left palate, and, as far as could be ascertained, on the back of pharynx. Staff-Surgeon Dr. Gordon being present, the ball, after much labor, was extracted, and found to be a grape-shot of seventeen and a half ounces weight. During the operation it was found necessary to dilate the wound by dividing the lip near its external angle—the portions of bone that were removed were the alveolar process, with all the molar teeth, including part of the palate and a portion of the orbital plate and nasal process of the superior maxillary bone, and all the malar bone. There was no serious hemorrhage during the operation, nor immediately after the extraction of the shot. The cheek was then plugged with lint and the wound brought into apposition by sutures. The man experienced immediate relief after the operation, sat up in bed, washed out his mouth, and drank some water; he seemed extremely thankful, and blessed the doctors. During the night and part of the next day there was some oozing from the mouth. No bad symptom occurred until the 20th, when an active hemorrhage came on from the back of the palate. The exact source could not be ascertained. He became very weak and almost pulseless; but the hemorrhage was eventually restrained by means of ice and plugging the wound with lint moistened in tincture of matico. Iced drinks occasionally.
31st.—The man is now doing extremely well, can talk, and takes a pint of jelly daily; the external wound is not yet quite healed, in consequence of the saliva flowing through it. The right eye is uninjured, and sight unaffected.
September 1st.—He has just been discharged to general hospital, Balaklava, from the regimental hospital.
THOS. J. ATKINSON, Assistant-Surgeon,
31st Regiment, in Med. Charge.
Camp before Sebastopol, September 1, 1855.
On the morning of July 24th, Private Francis O’Brien, a lad of eighteen, was brought from the trenches, with a wound from a musket-ball in the right temple. It entered about two inches above the orbit, passed downward, and drove out a large portion of the supra-orbital ridge, which appeared to be imbedded in the upper eyelid, and was cut down upon by the medical officer in the trenches, in mistake for the ball, which it certainly very much resembled. As no ball could be found, it was supposed to have passed out at the opening of entrance.
The finger when passed into the wound could feel the pulsation of the brain, yet from that day to the present no symptom of cerebral disturbance has appeared, unless it be that since his convalescence the muscles of the face work convulsively when he feels faint and weak from remaining too long in the erect posture. About a month after admission, the detached portion of the bone above the orbit was removed from the eyelid, though with considerable difficulty, and on the following morning the ball fell from the wound, much to the poor lad’s horror, who thought his eye had dropped out.