On arrival at the hospital, where comparative leisure and absence of exposure afford means of careful diagnosis and definitive treatment, the following are the points to be attended to by the surgeon: firstly, examination of the wound with a view to obtaining a correct knowledge of its nature and extent; secondly, removal of any foreign bodies which may have lodged; thirdly, adjustment of lacerated structures; and fourthly, the application of the primary dressings. The diagnosis should be established as early as possible after the arrival at hospital. An examination can then be made with more ease to the patient and more satisfactorily to the surgeon than at a later period. Not only is the sensibility of the parts adjoining the track of the ball numbed, but there is less swelling to interfere with the examination, so that the amount of disturbance effected among the several structures is more obviously apparent. One of the earliest rules for examining a gunshot wound is to place the patient, as nearly as can be ascertained, in a position similar to that in which he was, in relation to the missile, at the time of being struck by it. In almost every instance the examination will be facilitated by attention to this precept. Occasionally it will at once indicate the probable injury to vessels or other important structures, in cases where the mutual relations of the wounds of entrance and exit, in the erect or horizontal posture of the body, would lead to no such information. Even in the direct course taken by a rifle–ball in a simple flesh wound, an erroneous opinion of the line in which the ball has moved may be formed from the first view, in consequence of the ready mobility of the several structures among themselves and their varying degrees of elasticity. Injury to nerves inducing paralysis, contusions of blood–vessels leading to secondary hemorrhage or gangrene, may thus, without sufficient circumspection, be overlooked on the first admission to hospital. When only one opening has been made by a ball, it is to be presumed that it is lodged somewhere in the wound, and search must be made for it accordingly. But even where two openings exist, and evidence is afforded that these are the apertures of entrance and exit of one projectile, examination should still be made to detect the presence of foreign bodies. Portions of clothing, and, as has already been shown, other harder substances, are not unfrequently carried into a wound by a ball; and, though it itself may pass out, these may remain behind either from being diverted from the straight line of the wound or from becoming caught and impacted in the fibrous tissue through which the ball has passed. The inspection of the garments worn over the part wounded may often serve as a guide in determining whether foreign bodies have entered or not, and, if so, their kind, and thus save time and trouble in the examination of the wound itself.