Experimental pistol-shooting at short range, 1881.

Experimental pistol-shooting at short range, 1881.

Fish, D. B. N. (Dyer Ball Nelson) 1838-1895.

Gunshot wounds.

Massachusetts Medico-Legal Society.

D.B.N. Fish, a physician and medical examiner at Amherst, compiled studies of gunshot residue; the item displayed shows a shot from a Smith and Wesson revolver at a distance of four inches. Fish was attempting to determine whether any differences would be apparent between suicidal and homicidal wounds.

Fish presented his findings to the Massachusetts Medico-Legal Society at its meeting on February 6, 1884, as “The external appearance of pistol-shot wounds,” and described some of results of his experiments:
I hope to demonstrate … that in pistol and revolver shots these gases of explosion, instead of passing with the ball through the skin, expend the greater part of their force upon the tissues at a point outside of the opening made by the ball. I can see that some particles of powder may cling to the ball and explode after passing through the skin. For, in firing a Colt’s revolver at twenty-eight inches, several grains of powder passed, probably with the ball, through blotting paper, and sprinkled the ash, left after burning, around the hole made by the ball in a second sheet of paper which was placed four inches behind the first one."

Residue from a gunshot from a Smith and Wesson revolver at a distance of four inches.

Fish, D. B. N. (Dyer Ball Nelson) 1838-1895.

Boston Medical Library Rare Books Collection.

1881.

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1 document

English

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34.X.1.

From the Collections of the Boston Medical Library.