22

Robert Dare—Serous apoplexy, with extensive liver disease of long standing.

Elizabeth Moore—Typhus fever, preceded by dysentery.

Henry Morrison—From gunshot wounds received in action.

Hamiona—ditto ditto ditto

Moli—ditto ditto ditto

The other cases treated need no particular remarks, with the exception of one of carcinoma of the whole globe of the eye, which had reached the ulcerative stage and presented a very large protrusion in front of the orbit. The whole eye was extirpated, leaving the orbit quite empty save the cut end of the optic nerve, which could be seen in its proper site. The man left the hospital within a month, and the disease has up to this time not returned.

One of the sailors of the ship Strathallan, just before arriving at this port, fell from the fore-top on to the deck. His fall being slightly broken by some of the rigging, the injuries he sustained were fracture of the lower jaw bone at the symphysis and fracture of the palatine plate of the upper jaw. There was some bleeding from the ear. He was admitted into hospital immediately on arrival here, and is now doing well.

The hospital in its present enlarged form has ample accommodation for 17 beds, but its capacity and resources were called into sudden and unwanted activity in October last, after the engagement at Oamaru, by having (in addition to its usual average of inmates,) to receive within its walls over twenty wounded Hau Haus, and four or five wounded of the Militia and Volunteers. The emergency was met on the part of the Government, by providing immediately a supply of competent assistants, and, although the hospital was crowded to excess, everything was done in the way of attention to the dressing of the wounded, whether European or native, and to their dietary. It was found necessary to draft off some to the Gaol and elsewhere immediately, and others followed as their wounds healed, for the purpose of safe custody.

The gunshot wounds presented the usual variety of such casualties, whether as to locality or the importance of the parts involved. More than half were wounded in more places than one, and in about the same proportion were complicated with comminuted fracture of some one or more bones. The wounds in our own men contrasted favourably with those of the Hau Haus, as the latter presented, at the point of exit of the Enfield bullet, a terribly jagged appearance, whilst in the former, the wound being caused by smooth round bullets, presented no such formidable appearance.

The wounds may, for clearness and conciseness, be divided into the different regions of the body where they occurred, commencing with the

HEAD AND FACE.

There were two cases of gunshot wound of the face, one in which the ball entered just below the right ala of the nose, and, passing to the left, broke to pieces the whole of the left upper maxillary bone, and the coronoid process of the lower jaw bone passing out near the latter. A large portion of the upper maxilla was dissected away, and, during the healing process, several pieces of bone of different sizes were exfoliated. The wound was dressed with Condy’s fluid, and the case has done well. The other was a wound of the body of the lower jawbone at its inferior part on both sides, lacerating the whole of the soft structures between the skin and inside of the mouth. There was in this case great exfoliation of the bone and extensive sloughing of the soft parts, the external wound communicating directly with the interior of the mouth.

There were two wounded in the neck, one with a slight grazing of the front of the thyroid cartilage. In the other the ball entered at the upper part of the left bladebone, fracturing this at its upper costa, and, passing inwards and forwards beneath the sterno-cleido-mastoid and other muscles, made its exit by perforating the oesophagus, and was vomited or spat out of his mouth at the time. From the entire absence of any symptoms warranting a belief in this eccentric course of the bullet, either in the throat or the wound, his statement was scarcely credited, but, after a week or two, fluids administered by the mouth found their way out at the dorsal opening. There was not a single untoward symptom followed, and the wounds were healed in a month.

SHOULDER AND ARMS.

There were 19 wounded in this region; and, in three cases both scapula and humerus, and, in five, the humerus with the bones forming the elbow joint were shattered. During the course of the treatment a great deal of bone was either extracted or came away. In nearly all, a tolerably useful joint was ob-