Of all instruments for conducting an examination of a gunshot wound, the finger of the surgeon is the most appropriate. By its means the direction of the wound can be ascertained with least disturbance of the several structures through which it takes its course. If bones are fractured, the number, shape, length, position, and degree of looseness of the fragments may be more readily observed. In case of lodgment of foreign bodies, not only is their presence more obvious to the finger direct than through the agency of a probe or other metallic instrument, but by its means intelligence of their qualities is also communicated. A piece of cloth lying in a wound is recognized at once by a finger, while, saturated with clot as it is under such circumstances, it would probably be confounded among the other soft parts by any other mode of examination. The index finger naturally occurs as the most convenient for this employment; but the opening through the skin is sometimes too contracted to admit its entrance, and in this case the substitution of the little finger will usually answer all the purposes intended. When the finger fails to reach sufficiently far, owing to the depth of the wound, the examination is often facilitated by pressing the soft parts from an opposite direction toward the finger–end. It was formerly the custom to enlarge the external orifice of all gunshot wounds by incision, and not merely the opening, but the walls of the wound itself, as soon after the injury as possible. This was not done as a means of rendering the examination easier, but as a prophylactic measure. Dilatation was also employed by tents and various other means with a view to secure the escape of sloughs and discharges. The opinions held by the older surgeons respecting the nature of these injuries, already briefly adverted to in the historical remarks on the subject, sufficiently explain their object in making incisions—namely, to convert what they regarded as a poisoned into a simple wound, and to obviate tension, and prevent strangulation of neighboring tissues by tumefaction or inflammation arising in its track. Even so late as 1792, Baron Percy, in his Manuel du Chirurgien d’Armée, writes: “The first indication of cure is to change the nature of the wound as nearly as possible into an incised one.” English surgeons have, however, generally discarded the practice since the arguments used by John Hunter against it, just about the same date as Baron Percy wrote, excepting only in cases where it is required to allow of the extraction of some extraneous body to secure a wounded artery, to replace parts in their natural situation, as in protrusion of viscera in wounds of the abdomen, or, “in short, when anything can be done to the part wounded after the opening is made for the present relief of the patient or the future good arising from it.” It does not often happen that it is necessary to enlarge the openings of wounds to remove balls, although