Man is hardly a tough resilient animal. We tend to think too much and make assumptions about the severity of the injury which dictate our actions. In days gone by I suspect that lack of knowledge helped people to keep going longer, but we are still small, thin skinned and light boned animals.
La Garde notes, with modern rounds (i.e. 30-06 & 7mm Mauser) that lung injuries are the most survivable of all dangerous wounds, and that if a man was alive more than five minutes or so after being hit in the chest then he had a 72% chance of survival, and with minimal medical intervention. If the man was still alive an hour after being hit through the lungs he had a 96% chance of survival. One lung was considered no problem at all, and even if both lungs had been hit the good surgeon considered that this was no crisis. Unless the pulmonary artery or vein had been hit, the person generally only needed a sterile dressing over the wound!! If of course the artery had been hit the person would be dead within five minutes and so never reach a dressing station.
This got me thinking. If a frail man can survive such wounds with ease, why cannot game? To be sure, we generally use expanding bullets and try and place our shots so that they rake more than just one lung, but it doesnt always work out. Both La Garde, and Blair-Brown, the military surgeon who attended to many of the British wounded in the Zulu war of 1879, noted that lungs healed quicker than any other tissue and even tended to re-inflate themselves if bleeding had caused one of them to collapse. The entry of air into the chest cavity was more complicated and tended to require medical intervention. Small diameter bullets seldom made a wound large enough to admit significant quantities of air and the .45-70s and .577/.450s were the smallest bore weapons that usually caused this kind of problem.
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What about shots through the heart? Anybody who has long hunted buffalo know that even a direct hit on the heart sometimes fails to produce the required result within an acceptable period of time. Relatively small diameter solids from rifles like a 9,3 or .375 are the usual culprits but occasionally there are stories about bigger bullets almost failing. The heart is a fascinating muscle and trauma surgeons in some of the less salubrious City hospitals are fairly adept at treating heart wounds and expecting the patient to survive. The bottom two thirds of the heart (the ventricles) are composed of thick muscle with a small opening inside for blood. As the heart pumps it contracts and tends to seal the wound. In humans, knife wounds are remarkably survivable...
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The other very note-worthy fact to come out of La Gardes book is just how often round nosed bullets push organs out of the way without damaging them. From both the Spanish American war, and Anglo-Boer wars he documents several hundred instances of 7mm Mauser bullets whistling straight through men without causing any damage. Arteries and intestines were frequently moved aside, but also the heart, liver etc. La Garde estimates that 30% of the abdominal wounds received by American troops in the Spanish American war actually failed to perforate the intestines. If a 7mm has that little success on man how much more so a .375 (which has less than double the frontal area of a 7mm) on an animal more than ten times our size? Even where organs such as the stomach, intestines or liver had been hit, fit men in a reasonably clean environment had a 30+% chance of surviving without medical intervention. I always thought that liver hits were invariably fatal, but both La Garde and Blair-Brown note that liver wounds were amongst the most survivable of all abdominal wounds provided a major blood vessel hadnt been hit (and if it was then the person usually failed to live long enough to reach a dressing station).
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Even the brain is not a dead certainty (excuse the pun). Photo below is an X-ray, taken thirteen years AFTER he was shot, of a troopers head (Co D, 1st Neb Vol infantry), clearly showing the 7mm caliber bullet lodged in the back of his brain. The bullet entered his head just off centre above the left eye, although it caused him some inconvenience, the only medical treatment he received was a sterile wound dressing. La Garde cites other instances supported with photographs and X-rays, while more recently there was a well documented case of a journalist covering a dockyard strike who was knocked unconscious in a scuffle. He thought it was the brick that he saw lying next to him when he came round, but some years later when he went for a check up on eye trouble they found the .45 bullet in his brain. Certainly the frontal lobes are not vital to life, as the old system of Frontal Lobotomy for criminals shows. It is only the back third of the brain which is essential for life support functions.
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The last category of wounds that require our attention are neck wounds, which are so favoured by meat hunters. Even .577 musket balls or .45 Martini Henry bullets were generally pretty harmless on neck shots, provided the spine wasnt broken. Hits on the spiny processes, cause spinal concussion but even large bullets usually failed to break the neck on a man. True, todays high velocity soft points are far more effective than either a round nosed 7mm solid or low velocity .45 lead slug, but it is still cause for thought.
Kuitenkin kun lukee nuo yllä olevat lainaukset, niin tulee väkisinkin mieleen kysymys notta kuinka moni väkivaltatilanteessa tippuminen johtuu tosiasiallisesti henkisen kantin katkeamisesta eikä esim. tajuttomuusta tai muusta fyysisen toimintakyvyn menetyksestä. Tai ottelussa? Toki jos taju lähtee niin taju lähtee mutta kuinka moni lopettaa sitä ennen omasta valinnasta vastaan tappelemisen...joka on kuitenkin väkivaltatilanteessa ainoa asia mikä pelastaa Kalle Karatekan takaliston...
Sana ollos vapaa.