The morphology of musket wounds

The study of historical surgery allows for greater understanding of historical medicine and how such techniques di!er to modern equivalents. As such, recent academic interest has focused upon the biomedical validity of the surgical techniques used to treat patients in the medieval and early modern periods. (1) The early modern time period is classically de"ned to encompass 1500-1800 AD. For the purposes of this article, ‘modern’ refers to the late 19th century onwards. Early modern military surgeons would have had to treat gunshot wounds caused by lead musket balls "red from black powder charged "rearms. Substantial advances have been made in ballistics technology since the 16th and 17th centuries, fundamental adaptations to the technology have led to di!ering ballistics behaviour between modern and historical ammunition. Previous attempts to describe musket wound morphology have used modern projectiles as analogues. (1) Extrapolating data derived from modern projectiles to apply to historical examples is inherently #awed due to such design di!erences. As such, debate still exists regarding the morphology of musket ball in#icted wounds, and therefore whether the methods adopted by early modern surgeons to treat them would have been e!ective.