Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/32

20 projectile? Did he test the explosive power of the one and the poisonous character of the other? He gives no evidence of having done so, and advances no proof of his assertions.

It is a very remarkable fact that no case was ever reported in Northern hospitals, or by Northern surgeons, of Union soldiers having been wounded by such barbarous missiles as these from the Confederate side.

I have very carefully examined those valuable quarto volumes Issued by the United States Medical Department and entitled "The Medical and Surgical History of the Rebellion," and as yet have failed to find any case of wound or death reported as having occurred by an explosive or poisoned musket ball, excepting that on page 91 of volume II of said work there is a table of four thousand and two (4,002) cases of gunshot wounds of the scalp, two (2) of which occurred by explosive musket balls. To which army these two belonged does not appear.

A letter addressed to the Surgeon-General of the United States by the writer on this subject, has elicited the reply that the Medical Department is without any information as to wounds by such missiles. I do not find such projectiles noticed as preserved in the museum of the Surgeon-General's Department, where rifle projectiles taken from wounds are usually deposited.

In the second place, the manufacture, purchase, issue or use of such projectiles for firearms by the Confederate States, is positively denied by the Confederate authorities, as the following correspondence will show: