From the earliest time of the application of gunpowder to implements of war, down to the present day, the wounds inflicted by its means have excited the most marked interest among surgeons; nor can this be wondered at, when the immensely superior energy of this agent in comparison with all the mechanical powers previously in use for hostile purposes, and the terrible nature of its effects on the human frame, are remembered. By its introduction the whole aspect of war was changed, in a great degree, by the distance at which opposing forces were enabled to contend with each other; just as, in our day, the nature of battle seems destined to undergo another change from the increased range and precision of fire obtained through the general use of rifled weapons. But though the alterations now being made in the qualities of fire–arms are of the utmost importance to those whose business and especial study is the art of war, to the army surgeon the interest they excite is chiefly limited to the degree of injury and destruction inflicted by them as compared with weapons of a less perfect kind; while to the surgeons employed at the time of the introduction of gunpowder, the wounds were wholly new in their nature as well as degree. Recollecting the ignorance which then prevailed in all departments of science and art, it can excite no surprise that the new engines of war, with the flame and noise accompanying their discharge, were regarded with superstitious terror; nor that surgeons for a long time found an explanation of the sloughing severity of the injuries they inflicted, and of their difficult cure, in the poisonous nature of gunpowder, or of the projectiles which had been acted upon by it, or in the burning effects of these latter from heat acquired in their rapid flight through the air. Unfortunately, these erroneous views did not end with the theories from which they started, but led to treatment which only aggravated the evils inflicted by the new weapons, and interrupted the progress of the healing action, which nature would otherwise have established. The wound being regarded as a poisoned wound, it was only by a long and tedious process of suppuration that the poison could be hoped to be got rid of from the surface, and prevented from entering the system of the patient. The irritative fever, the wasting and emaciation, and all the other results of the protracted cure of the injury were so many evidences of the indirect effect of the poison working in the frame; just as the constitutional shock at the time of the wound, the loss of vitality along the surface in the track of a small projectile, or of the tissues laid bare by the passage of the cannon–ball were regarded as evidences of its direct influence. On looking back at the works of successive writers on this class of injuries, the reader is surprised that the improvement in their treatment has been so gradual and slow; and cannot fail to