Library of Congress

Assistant Surgeon James T. Calhoun, 74th New York Infantry

On March 5, 1862, James T. Calhoun, an assistant surgeon in the 74th New York Infantry—one of the regiments in Union general Daniel Sickles’ Excelsior Brigade—wrote a letter to the editors of The Medical and Surgical Reporter, a weekly publication produced in Philadelphia. Calhoun relayed a recent incident in the army, one he believed might be used by some to reinforce the popular notion that a soldier could be wounded by the “wind” of a passing projectile. As his letter, reproduced below in full, shows, Calhoun remained skeptical of the possibility:

Military surgeons, I believe, without exception, unite in affirming that injuries cannot be inflicted by the wind of a passing ball, but popular belief tends to the contrary opinion, and there are also some in the profession who still adhere to the latter opinion. The experience of all the great military surgeons is, that cannon-balls may pass in the closest proximity to the body without inflicting the slightest injury; but popular opinion clings with its usual pertinacity to the opposite idea, and every old man-of-wars-man or old soldier fondly relates some case of which he declares he was an eye-witness, which proves, as he believes, the popular hypothesis. The case which I propose to describe will probably be heralded far and wide through the newspaper press as indubitable proof of the correctness of the popular belief, and, therefore, I propose to detail the facts of the case.

On the 28th of February last General Sickles was reviewing the 5th Regiment of his brigade upon a level piece of ground on the bluff at Liverpool Point, Maryland. While thus engaged, the enemy opened fire upon the regiment from a thirty-pound rifled Parrot gun placed upon a hill on the opposite bank of the Potomac, which is at this point nearly three miles wide. Captain R., one of the brigade staff, was walking near the edge of the bluff, when a shell from the enemy’s gun passed within (as near as can be estimated) about six to eighteen inches of his body, at about the height of the knee, and buried itself in the ground at a point a few feet distant, where it exploded, throwing the earth in every direction.

The shell was (judging from other shells which were fired from the same gun and failed to explode) a conical percussion shell, some twelve inches in length and four inches in diameter, and weighing thirty pounds.

As the shell whizzed past him, the captain involuntarily wheeled around, turning upon his left foot and swinging around his right (the one toward the enemy). He felt, as he swung around, a pain in his knee, and exclaimed, “I’ve jumped around so quick, I’ve hurt my knee!” In conversing about it afterward, he mentioned that, as the shell whistled by him, he “felt a sudden pressure” upon the side from which the shot came, and it was a question with him whether he did not receive the injury from that pressure.

Upon examination, the skin upon the outer side of the knee was found ecchymosed [bruised]. He applied to it a stimulating liniment, and in a few days it was well again.

This case is cited throughout the division as a positive case of injury from the wind of the ball. To my mind it appears clear that the injury or ecchymosis was either produced by the sudden jump, as was his first impression, or it may have been done by a clod of earth thrown by the explosion of the shell (as he says it was thrown around and over him). Several persons were standing withing a few feet of the captain, and declare they felt the pressure described by him, to a greater or less extent. I have, however, given the facts, and the reader can draw his own deductions.

Related topics: medical care