Skull with ball lodged in frontal bone

Skull with ball lodged in frontal bone

United States--History--War of 1812.

Wounds, Gunshot

human remains

Catalog entry: A cranium, showing a ball lodged in the frontal bone, just above the right orbit and towards the median line, and which had been in that situation for about twenty-five years. The patient, aged forty-five, was sail-maker on board the sloop of war Enterprise in her engagement with the Boxer. Whilst loading a cannon, a shot, probably from a canister, hit the carriage of the gun, and glancing, struck him in the forehead and threw him senseless on the deck. In a few moments he arose and finished loading his gun, and whilst doing so, as he said, the ball dropped out upon the deck ; he afterwards received, in the same engagement, a severe sabre cut, which penetrated the cavity of the abdomen. In December, 1839, he entered the United States Marine Hospital, at Chelsea, with pneumonia. When convalescent, he, of his own accord, introduced some lint, and plugged up the wound in the forehead, which had always remained open, discharging pus freely; two days afterwards he was taken sick, and the lint was removed with much relief; he, however, continued to grow worse, died the next day of very extensive, acute meningitis. One half of a large leaden ball is seen to be firmly imbedded in the bone in the situation above described, the flat section being external and oblique, with an opening quite through into the cavity of the cranium, and around this, upon the inside, some deposit of new bone. A question arises as to whether the ball was discharged in the form in which it is now seen, or whether it was split as it glanced against the gun-carriage.

Skull, with lead ball lodged in frontal bone above the right orbit. The patient was a sail-maker on the Enterprise and was wounded in her battle with the Boxer. He lived with the wound for 25 years.

Unknown

Stedman, Charles Harrison, 1805-1866.

Warren Anatomical Museum

model

Bone

physical object

05109

Donated to the Boston Society for Medical Improvement by Charles H. Stedman in 1840.