Full Metal Jackets and the Civil War

No, not the film. Rather, an interesting new article in the medical literature that examines the differences in wounds created by the Civil War Minie projectile and the full metal jacketed bullet of the Spanish-American War: "Wound ballistics: Minié ball vs. full metal jacketed bullets--a comparison of Civil War and Spanish-American War firearms," Military Medicine, April 2009, Vol. 174 (4):403-7 by PJ Dougherty (Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Michigan) and HC Eidt (Winn Army Community Hospital, Fort Stewart, GA).

The abstract describes the experiment and summarizes the conclusions:

OBJECTIVE: The advent of the full metal jacketed bullet in the late nineteenth century was thought to cause less severe battlefield wounds. This study compares the wounding characteristics of a reproduction rifle from the American Civil War to one of the Spanish-American War using the wound profile method.

METHODS: A 0.58 caliber rifled musket using Minié balls and a 0.30 caliber Krag-Jorgenson rifle using full metal jacketed bullets were fired into calibrated 10% ordnance gelatin blocks at a distance of 3 meters. Measured parameters included maximum temporary cavity, muzzle velocity, and the permanent track.

RESULTS: Maximum temporary cavities were significantly larger using the musket, averaging 121 mm (+/- 5.4) vs. 38.6 mm (+/- 8.8) (p <>

CONCLUSIONS: The rifled musket produced more severe wounds when compared to the Krag-Jorgenson rifle, as was clinically apparent to observers at the time of the Spanish-American War.

The article is interesting on a number of levels:

1) it includes a brief description of the evolution of the Minie and Krag-Jorgenson projectiles and the debate as to whether the full metal jacketed bullet would actually produce more or less severe wounds.

2) an interesting experiment that used battlefield dropped Minie bullets (to minimize metallurgical differences in reproductions) and an authentic Krag-Jorgenson rifle.

3) an excellent bibliography with references to period (Civil War and Spanish-American War) reports on wound ballistics. One of the most interesting is Griffith's 1890s experiments with human cadavers (rather than gelatin used in modern experiments) to examine wound ballistics.

I am contacting Drs. Dougherty and Eidt with hopes I can arrange an interview for my "Medical Department" column in The Civil War News. Stay tuned.

Advance Praise for "Years of Change and Suffering"!

Co-editor Guy Hasegawa and I are putting finishing touches on the manuscript for Years of Change and Suffering: Modern Perspectives on Civil War Medicine, our collection of invited expert essays. The book is due to be published in October 2009 by Edinborough Press. You can read more details about the various contributors and their chapters here and here.

A few people have had a chance to read the manuscript already and they have provided some very kind advance praise, which we are proud, happy - and humbled - to share:

"The new book Years of Change and Suffering:Modern Perspectives on Civil War Medicine is a must for all interested in the subject of Civil War medicine. Its authors are the elite of Civil War medical scholars of our time and they give a new, modern insight to the subject. Highly recommended." - Gordon Dammann, D.D.S.

Dr. "Gordy" Damman is the founder of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine and the author of several books, including three volumes of the Pictorial Encyclopedia of Civil War Medical Instruments and Equipment and - more recently - Images of Civil War Medicine: A Photographic History (Demos Medical Publishing, 2007) with Alfred Jay Bollet.

“Years of Change and Suffering is a collection of fresh and insightful essays on those essential, yet often overlooked, underpinnings of medical care in the American Civil War. With impeccable scholarship each essay enlivens seemingly mundane subject matter and illuminates its importance to the progress of medical science, both during the war years and beyond.” - Bill J. Gurley, Ph.D.

Bill is editor of the excellent book, I Acted From Principle: The Civil War Diary of a Confederate Surgeon in the Trans-Mississippi (University of Arkansas Press, 2005); he is also Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

"If hindsight is 20/20, then this collection of essays by eight renowned authors and scholars give us a 20/15 vision of Civil War medicine. A must volume for the library of any Civil War medical historian." - Peter J. D'Onofrio, Ph.D.

Pete is founder and President of the Society of Civil War Surgeons.

Finally, Dr. Thomas P. Lowry penned a wonderful Foreword to the book which includes the following kind endorsement:

"Years of Change and Suffering adds a whole new dimension to the literature on Civil War medicine: it does not duplicate earlier work, but gives us in-depth treatment of subjects explored only minimally in other works and illuminates the quantum leap in medical knowledge and organization spawned by the vast necessities and cataclysmic suffering of a continent at war...This is a remarkable book. The contributors are the top people in their respective fields. The narrative prose is lively and clear...I found it both informative and enjoyable."

Tom is the author of more than a dozen books on the Civil War - especially the medical aspects - including the landmark The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell: Sex and the Civil War (Stackpole Books, 1994) and - most recently - Confederate Death Sentences: A Reference Guide (BookSurge, 2009).

On behalf of Guy and the other contributors to the book, we want to thank Gordy, Bill, Pete and Tom for their wonderful endorsements.

Keep posted to theblog for more news on the book!