Perforation

“ The margin of the perforation is frequently smoothed as by continued motion against a handle, which would not be so in the case of a club.
3. Some specimens are entirely too small to have been of any avail as weapons of offense.
4. The hole is usually so placed that the handle would not be at right angles to the shell as would be the case with a war club.
5. The perforation is frequently too small to admit a handle of sufficient size to deliver a heavy blow without danger of breaking. ”

“ Dimensions of Perforations.—At different times a great deal of weight has been attached to the dimension of the perforation through such objects as wood, glass, or even through the bones of the body, made by the bullet which is supposed or known to have destroyed life. Wrong inferences have been drawn sometimes from a study of undischarged bullets or cartridges similar, at least before firing, to that which has been taken from a given body. ”

“ Shape.—The ogival tip and general wedge-like outline, while decreasing the aerial resistance to and increasing the power of penetration possessed by the bullet, at the same time allow the escape of some structures by displacement, while others are saved from complete destruction by undergoing perforation. Beyond this the sharper the tip, the smaller is the area of the body primarily impinged upon, the less the resistance offered to perforation, and to some degree the less the destruction of surrounding tissues. ”

“ The central perforation is often very much enlarged. A number of specimens, recently sent to the National Museum, from a mound in Auglaize County, Ohio, show several stages of this enlargement. One specimen five inches across has a perforation nearly one inch in diameter, while in another the perforation is enlarged until the disk has become a ring. These gorgets show evidences of long use, the surfaces and edges being worn and the perforations much extended in the manner described above. They have been derived from the Busycon perversum. ”

“ There are some instances, indeed, in which the perforation would appear to be almost too small for a shaft of sufficient strength to wield the hammer, if such it were; but even in such cases, where hard silicious pebbles have been used, they must, in all probability, have been intended for other purposes than for weights. ”

“ When the peritoneum is eaten through it is called perforation, for it means that there is an opening into the peritoneal cavity, and, unless the cavity is cut into, cleaned and properly drained death will take place in a very short time. I say death is inevitable without surgical treatment. In this I appear to be more radical than the most radical, for the best authors have much to say about perforation, diffuse peritonitis, and of patients who live after perforation, as though it were a common occurrence ”

“ The escape from actual destruction by structures lying in the immediate neighbourhood of the track is indeed often surprising, but not perhaps so astonishing as the perforation of long narrow structures such as the peripheral nerves and vessels, without irreparable damage to the parts remaining, and this although the structures themselves may be of a diameter not exceeding that of the bullet itself. ”

“ Wedge fractures.—This form (c and d, fig. 50) is equally characteristic of gunshot injury with pure perforation; it is met with in two varieties. c illustrates the more strongly marked type; in it the bullet makes passing lateral impact with the shaft, and from the point struck radiating fissures extend to the opposite margin, so that a wedge-shaped piece of bone often secondarily comminuted is separated from the remainder of the shaft ”

“ The general principle of all perforating machines is a series of hollow needles, which remove rows of small disks of the paper from between the stamps, and thus fit them to be readily torn apart. For convenience of reference and description philatelists have adopted, as a standard of measurement, the space of two centimetres. The gauge of a perforation is determined by the number of holes in this distance. ”

“ The resistance of wrought-iron plates to perforation by steel projectiles varies as the squares of their thickness. Hitting a plate at an angle diminishes the effect as regards the power of perforation in the proportion of the sine of the angle of incidence to unity. The resistance of wrought-iron plates to perforation by steel shot is practically not much, if at all, increased by backing simply of wood, within the usual limits of thickness ”

“ We are fortified in our opinion that more than one kind of perforation was used for the same printing, by the impossibility of believing that one whole printing of the One Penny, red, was perforated B × A. This variety is so scarce, that the number of specimens known to us can literally be counted on the fingers of one hand. ”

“ Reasoning from the analogous wounds of the liver, tracks scoring the surface of these organs might be much more to be feared than clean perforations. The elasticity of the lung tissue, however, must make such lesions rare. In point of fact, there is no reason why a perforation by a bullet of small calibre should be much more feared than a puncture from an exploring trocar, and the danger of the two wounds is probably very nearly the same. ”

“ The perforation operation should only be employed when the patient is in circumstances where a complete submucous resection cannot be carried out. The Gleason-Watson operation is unsuitable where the deviation reaches high up. It should be avoided if it is seen that the perforation will have to be brought close forward to the anterior nares. ”

“ Irregularity in the spacing of the holes does not seem to have been contemplated, but, as the vast majority of machines make holes spaced at regular intervals, this system of taking a gauge of 2 centimetres, applying it to a line of perforations, and counting the holes contained [31] in that space in order to get a number by which that particular perforation may always be identified, works admirably in practice in by far the greater number of cases. ”

“ Vincent stamps. It can never be mistaken for the perforation A, for not only [43] is its most frequent gauge a higher one than that to which the A machine usually attains, but its pins, or plungers, make clean-cut circular holes, smaller in size, but otherwise just like the early perforations of the B machine, although, from insufficient care and attention being paid to the working of the machine, it is rather difficult to find specimens that show the holes clean cut on all four sides. ”

“ Whatever may be the nature of the rock, if it is very hard, the depth of the holes is reduced; that is, the perforation is only continued for a certain given time—about six and a half hours—which, for the eighty holes with ten perforaters, gives us about three-quarters of an hour for each hole. ”

“ The simplest and certainly the commonest accident is perforation of the uterus with a sound, dilator, or forceps in the operation of curetting. Many cases are known in which the uterus has been perforated by clean instruments of this class and the patients have suffered no inconvenience. ”

“ The perforation in the tympanic membrane becomes smaller, and often entirely closes, so that in a young person the restoration may be so complete that it is difficult to know where the seat of perforation has been. ”

“ And a perforation even, when made, is very easily repaired, even by the navigators themselves, under circumstances however unfavorable. With a smooth and heavy stone placed upon the outside for an anvil, and another used on the inside as a hammer, the protrusion is easily beaten down, the opening is closed, the continuity of [Pg 167] surface is restored, and the damaged boat becomes, excepting, perhaps, in the imagination of the navigator, as good once more as ever. ”

“ If you had been struck with one of your own bullets, a carriage and pair would have been none too large to drive through the hole it would have made. As it is, you're drilled clean--a nice little perforation. All you need is antiseptic washing and dressing, and you'll be around in a month. ”

“ Cheatle in such a wound. The patient died as a result of a double perforation of both cæcum and sigmoid flexure; none the less the bullet had crossed the small intestine area without inflicting any injury. ”

“ Again, supposing the mammoth carving to have been made before the fracture, the carvings on the reverse of the Stone, and the apparently meaningless scratch below the perforation, which, as it were, skips the fracture, may have been made long after it. As Dr. Putnam says: "The fact that a very large number of perforated stones are broken when found is worthy of consideration, and also that in most cases the fracture is through one of the holes." ”

“ These statements relative to the causes and phenomena of gelatinized perforation in the stomach supply the strongest possible presumption which analogy can furnish, that a great proportion of spontaneous gelatinized perforations in the human subject are owing to the action of the gastric juice after death. And this presumption is increased to something not far removed from demonstration by the circumstance, that in man the process of softening has actually been traced extending in the dead body. ”

“ The columellæ from which they are made may be to some extent naturally perforated, but are certainly not sufficiently so to permit the ready passage of a cord. The points are seldom sharp, and are often broken off. A bit of Dentalium inserted into the perforation and set with asphaltum helps to enforce the point and to guard against further breakage. The larger specimens are seldom perforated transversely at either end, while the smaller ones are almost always perforated at the larger end, which is slightly flattened. ”

“ Hard armour, such as chilled cast iron, cannot be perforated but must be destroyed by fracture, and its destruction is apparently dependent solely upon the striking energy of the projectile and independent of its diameter. The punching of hard-faced armour by uncapped projectiles is intermediate in character between perforation and cracking, but approaches the former more nearly than the latter. The formula most used in England in this case is Krupp’s formula for K.C., viz. ”

“ The operator should not be hurried, for he is apt to do harm if he is; there is no inducement to make great haste, for the patient does not suffer much, if any pain. After every two or three turns of the saw, it is prudent to examine the track with the flat end of a probe, or with a toothpick. If the perforation is found to be completed at any point, then the instrument is to be inclined to those which are undivided; and the fluted crown allows of this being done with great facility. After the circle of bone is separated on all sides, it is to be removed by forceps, or by means of the lever ”

“ Although the engraved design which once occupied the central space is almost totally effaced, one or two of the tips of the pyramidal rays may be detected. It is probable that the four round perforations correspond to the four triangular ones by which the arms of the cross in the preceding example are defined. The perforations for suspension are near one margin, and seem to be very much worn by use. The whole object is fragile from decay. This specimen is also in the Peabody Museum. ”

“ By collecting in a thorough and scientific manner, the collector will so impress on his memory the general features of the majority of the world's issues, together with the details of the safeguards afforded by paper, watermark and perforation, that the first glimpse at a forgery or fake will reveal a something which at once rouses suspicion that the particular label is not the legitimate offspring of the Post Office. ”

“ The only danger to be guarded against is the breaking or perforation of the sheath, which should in all cases be carefully examined before use. The material may be tested by stretching it gently over the inside of the thumb, when the smallest fracture can be detected. ”

“ Notched fractures.—These may be a slight degree of the form of wedge fracture last described; such a one is depicted in plate XXII. where a portion of the spine of the tibia has been carried away by a passing bullet. Other notched fractures approximate themselves more nearly to perforations, the notch being a groove secondary to the opening up of such a track as is shown in the illustration of a perforation of the lower third of the shaft of the tibia (fig. 57 on p. 219) . Notching or grooving is naturally much more common in the cancellous portions of bones. ”

“ This wire is oiled and introduced across the skull, and passed into the neck, through the center of the flax or tow with which it is stuffed, the ring being situated toward the anterior part of the skull, for the purpose of receiving the points of each of the wires that are passed through the feet and thighs.
The following is the mode in which this perforation is effected: A hole is bored with a bradawl the caliber of the wire which it is intended to use. ”

“ When the bullet perforates, the exit wound is usually larger and more extensively lacerated than the wound of entrance. Its margins are as a rule everted, and it shows no marks of flame, smoke, or powder. These features are common to all perforations caused by bullets.
Pistol wounds only produce dangerous effects when fired at close range, and when the cavities of the skull, the thorax, or the abdomen are implicated. In the abdomen a lethal injury may readily be caused even by pistols of the "toy" order. ”

“ At the same time there are some hammer-stones in which there are cavities worked on either face, so deep and so identical in character with those which, in meeting each other, produce the bell-mouthed perforations commonly present in the hammers intended for hafting, that at first sight it seems difficult to say whether they are finished implements, or whether they would have become perforated hammer-heads had the process of manufacture been completed. ”