Unusual wounds.

[gunny]

"Early in the engagement Col. Venable was thrown from his horse, and though seriously crippled, he continued in the fight, being carried by two of his men. Maj. Lamb was also unhorsed, and Lieut.-col. Swor's horse was killed under him by a cannon-ball; but both of these … officers continued the fight on foot. Capt. Gillett, … while … leading a charge was killed. …
"Private Haywood, of Company B, was shot through the breast with an iron ramrod, which being stopped by its swelled head, he caught hold of this and drew it out. Tip Allen, of Company I, was shot in the neck by a Minie-ball, which he in a short time coughed up."

 

[Scotsman]

On the topic of unusual wounds, here is an excerpt of a medical report I ran across years ago.

"Case 1046. -- Private B. D. Thayer, Co. D, 25th Massachusetts, aged
21 years, was wounded at Petersburg, June 30, 1864, and was taken to a
field hospital of the Eighteenth Corps, where it was reported that
Surgeon H. N. Small, 10th New Hampshire, removed a 12-pound round
shell from the left gluteal region, the patient surviving the
operation some forty-eight hours. The missile, which was retained by
the operator, was entirely concealed behind the gluteal muscles."

That poor guy.

 

[ole]

On the topic of unusual wounds, here is an excerpt of a medical report I ran across years ago.

"Case 1046. -- Private B. D. Thayer, Co. D, 25th Massachusetts, aged
21 years, was wounded at Petersburg, June 30, 1864, and was taken to a
field hospital of the Eighteenth Corps, where it was reported that
Surgeon H. N. Small, 10th New Hampshire, removed a 12-pound round
shell from the left gluteal region, the patient surviving the
operation some forty-eight hours. The missile, which was retained by
the operator, was entirely concealed behind the gluteal muscles."

That poor guy.

Ouch!

 

[diane]

Thomas Benton Smith had a weird wound. He'd been shot up before at various battles and was captured at Nashville. A Union officer whacked him in the head two or three times while he was walking to the rear under guard and a chunk of skull popped off! The Union surgeon told him he was a goner because he could see the brain throbbing in plain sight - the doc just stuck the skull piece back on and left him alone. He survived, however! A few years later, though, he began to suffer severe depression and his behavior became erratic and strange. One day he was running around naked shooting arrows at imaginary enemies, so they put him in the hospital. He died in 1923, the last Confederate general. He'd spent most of his 85 years in the Tennessee Insane Asylum.

 

[DixieRifles]

I can't think of any unusual wounds at the moment & this one may not be considered a wound.

I found an article in the Memphis Bulletin about the battle at Wyatt, MS, on Oct 15, 1863. I did not print a copy and have not been able to find it, again. The news article said the horse of a Union officer was spooked and reared up, tossing the officer off and down a well. I'm sure he had injuries but I don't think it even stated what they were.

 

[johan_steele]

I remember reading an account of the Regulars at Chickamauga, a Sgt was run through with a bayonet pinning him to a tree. He reached down withdrew said bayonet w/ musket attached and stabbed the man who had stabbed him killing the man instantly. He then carried that weapon with him in the retreat... he survived his wound.

 

[Deleted member 8452]

Lt.Col Phillip P Slaughter of the 56th Virginia had a bad unfortunate wound. During the Battle of Gaines Mill as he was leading his regiment on the final charge of the Union works, a shell struck his field binoculars hanging by a strap on his side, causing glass shards from the binoculars to be driven into his groin. His wound was so severe he never saw battle action again, and could only do desk duty.

 

[diane]

There was a strange non-wound at Gettysburg. A young soldier was sent to fill up canteens and went running through the bullets to get some water. On the way back a minie ball went between his shirt and his backpack! Didn't hurt him at all. He turned a complete circle, then staggered on his way.

Then there was Forrest. He was shot in the rear from the front! The bullet struck the hip bone and slipped around to the posterior.

 

[DixieRifles]

I was looking for a place to post this. Maybe not directly related to the question but an interesting medical observation.

Partial Quote

On the morning of April 6, Confederate troops based out of nearby Corinth, Mississippi, launched a surprise offensive against Grant's troops, hoping to defeat them before the second army arrived. Fighting continued until after dark, and by the next morning, the full force of the Ohio had arrived and the Union outnumbered the Confederates by more than 10,000. All told, the fighting at the Battle of Shiloh left more than 16,000 soldiers wounded and more 3,000 dead, and neither federal or Confederate medics were prepared for the carnage.

A BRIGHT SPOT
Some of the Shiloh soldiers sat in the mud for two rainy days and nights waiting for the medics to get around to them. As dusk fell the first night, some of them noticed something very strange: their wounds were glowing, casting a faint light into the darkness of the battlefield. Even stranger, when the troops were eventually moved to field hospitals, those whose wounds glowed had a better survival rate and had their wounds heal more quickly and cleanly than their unilluminated brothers-in-arms. The seemingly protective effect of the mysterious light earned it the nickname "Angel's Glow."

In 2001, almost one hundred and forty years after the battle, seventeen-year-old Bill Martin was visiting the Shiloh battlefield with his family. When he heard about the glowing wounds, he asked his mom - a microbiologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service who had studied luminescent bacteria that lived in soil - about it. "So you know, he comes home and, 'Mom, you're working with a glowing bacteria. Could that have caused the glowing wounds?'" Martin told Science Netlinks. "And so, being a scientist, of course I said, 'Well, you can do an experiment to find out.'" And that's just what Bill did.

He and his friend, Jon Curtis, did some research on both the bacteria and the conditions during the Battle of Shiloh. They learned that Photorhabdus luminescens, the bacteria that Bill's mom studied and the one he thought might have something to do with the glowing wounds, live in the guts of parasitic worms called nematodes, and the two share a strange lifecycle. Nematodes hunt down insect larvae in the soil or on plant surfaces, burrow into their bodies, and take up residence in their blood vessels. There, they puke up the P. luminescens bacteria living inside them. Upon their release, the bacteria, which are bioluminescent and glow a soft blue, begin producing a number of chemicals that kill the insect host and suppress and kill all the other microorganisms already inside it. This leaves P. luminescens and their nematode partner to feed, grow and multiply without interruptions.
As the worms and the bacteria eat and eat and the insect corpse is more or less hollowed out, the nematode eats the bacteria. This isn't a double cross, but part of the move to greener pastures. The bacteria re-colonize the nematode's guts so they can hitch a ride as it bursts forth from the corpse in search of a new host.
The next meal shouldn't be hard to find either, since P. luminescens already sent them an invitation to the party. Just before they got got back in their nematode taxi, P. luminescens were at critical mass in the insect corpse, and scientists think that that many glowing bacteria attract other insects to the body and make the nematode's transition to a new host much easier.

A GOOD LIGHT
Looking at historical records of the battle, Bill and Jon figured out that the weather and soil conditions were right for both P. luminescens and their nematode partners. Their lab experiments with the bacteria, however, showed that they couldn't live at human body temperature, making the soldiers' wounds an inhospitable environment. Then they realized what some country music fans already knew: Tennessee in the spring is green and cool. Nighttime temperatures in early April would have been low enough for the soldiers who were out there in the rain for two days to get hypothermia, lowering their body temperature and giving P. luminescens a good home.


Link with complete article: http://mentalfloss.com/article/30380/why-some-civil-war-soldiers-glowed-dark

 

[DaveBrt]

A friend of an ancestor reported that he was wounded in Devil's Den, Gettysburg. He was shot down the back -- the bullet entering at the shoulder and going from top to bottom of his back, exited from his buttocks. He was filing for a pension in the 1890's, claiming he had been hunched over, unable to work and in great pain ever since his wounding.