Experimental pistol-shooting at short range, 1881.

Item Information

Title:
Experimental pistol-shooting at short range, 1881.
Description:
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.
Creator:
Fish, D. B. N. (Dyer Ball Nelson) 1838-1895.
Date:
1881
Location:
Center for the History of Medicine (Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine)
Collection (local):
Rare Books and Journals
Subjects:
Fish, D. B. N. (Dyer Ball Nelson) 1838-1895
Gunshot wounds
Massachusetts Medico-Legal Society
Extent:
1 document
Link to Item:
http://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/items/show/17776
Terms of Use:
Rights status not evaluated.
Contact host institution for more information.
Language:
English
Notes:
Boston Medical Library Rare Books Collection.
From the Collections of the Boston Medical Library.
Identifier:
34.X.1.