_Punctures_, or such as are made by the thrust of pointed weapons, as by swords, daggers, lances, and bayonets, or by the accidental and forcible introduction of considerable thorns, large nails, skewers, &c. into the flesh,[106] comprise a class of wounds of great importance and danger, as they generally penetrate to a great depth, so as to injure large blood-vessels, nerves, viscera, and other organs of importance; and being inflicted with considerable violence the parts always suffer more injury than what would be produced by their simple division. It must also be considered, that a great number of the weapons by which such wounds are occasioned, increase materially in diameter from the point towards their other extremity; and hence, when they penetrate far, they must force the fibres asunder like a wedge, and cause a serious degree of stretching and contusion. It is this circumstance which gives so dangerous a character to bayonet wounds in the soft parts. The opening which the point of such a weapon produces is quite insufficient for the passage of the thicker part of it, which can therefore only enter by forcibly dilating, stretching, and otherwise injuring the fibres of the wounded flesh. But mortal injury may be inflicted by an extremely slender instrument, so as to occasion an apparently trivial puncture; and in some cases, the external injury is healed before the death, which it occasions, takes place. Such cases can only receive satisfactory elucidation from the lights of an anatomical dissection, under which head we have furnished several instructive examples. _Bruises_, or _Contusions_, strictly comprehend those injuries which are occasioned by the violent application of blunt or obtuse instruments to the soft parts. They are not unfrequently complicated with severe internal injury resulting from the violence which the parts have sustained, such as inflammation, suppuration, or even the rupture of some of the viscera, of which we shall hereafter present several illustrative cases. A blow on the region of the stomach sometimes occasions instant death; an effect which would appear to arise from an injury inflicted upon the eighth pair, and great sympathetic nerves, by which the heart is instantly paralysed. In these cases the heart has been found empty, and the stomach has appeared red and inflamed; this latter appearance is the obvious effect of the sudden cessation of the heart, producing the settling of the blood in the extreme arterial branches. Wounds of this description are, of course, more or less important, according to their locality; unless complicated with laceration, they are never attended with any considerable hemorrhage, although the minute vessels are necessarily ruptured, and the effusion of their contents produces the discoloration so characteristic of this kind of injury.