I have some gravel in my left knee that’s been there since I took a fall at a church retreat in 1984. My Dad has shrapnel in his left knee that’s been there since the Vietnam war. Not bullets, but the point remains; at least for a left knee, foreign objects are survivable.
As far as the Andrew Jackson story, the Times link includes this:
“One lead-poisoning expert, Dr. John F. Rosen, professor of pediatrics at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, who was not involved with the study, said that ‘‘hair lead levels are difficult to interpret’’ and that, contrary to the view of other experts, it is impossible to correlate blood and hair lead levels reliably.”
I don’t see where they 1) convincingly established lead as the cause of Jackson’s chronic health problems, or 2) ruled out lead exposure from other sources.
I remain doubtful that lead leaching from a single bullet could significantly have a major impact on someone’s health over time.
In general, foreign bodies tend to become walled off by granulomatous inflammation and eventually fibrous tissue, with no significant problems in the human body unless in an area critical to functioning or associated with chronic pain. Unless of course the foreign body is something like this.
People were exposed to compounds of lead quite frequently in past ages, and determining where the exposure came from can difficult (e.g. glaze in pottery)
My Dad took a bullet at age 3 (don’t ask - not sad but a long story), carried it with him through WW II, and still had it when he died in 2001. He was shot pre-x-rays and after mangling him a fair bit trying to find it, the doctor at the time just sewed him up and that was that. It never did give him any real issues other than always needing to warn x-ray techs that it was there. For some reason, where it was in his thoracic/abdominal cavity (? - not sure of the proper term) it kind of moved a bit over the years. To hear his doctor describe it — more than a bit.
Had there been an autopsy after his death (no need - natural causes) I almost would have requested they try to recover it. I grew up seeing the scar from “the search” that I could hide my 4-year-old hand in and hearing the story of how it came to be and I was always curious to see it other than on the film; to hold it in my hand. Oh well, right conditions and all, maybe some archeologist in the future will come across it.
Mark Seay played an entire NFL career and lives on today with a bullet next to his heart.
Plus the fact that Roosevelt was a badass whose life may have been saved by the 50 page speech in his pocket, that he still delivered with the bullet in his body. Bad. Ass.
Potential complications of leaving a bullet in the body:
May cause trouble with metal detectors and MRI machines.
May lead to technology-enhanced superheroism.
If the bandage is made from an artfully torn t-shirt or mini-skirt worn by the heroine, it’s basically magic medicine that can fix anything.
Harmless gunshot flesh wounds remind me of 80s/Arnold movies. So I can’t read the thread title without hearing “no problemo” in the T-800’s voice.
I have a metal plate in my head from age 6, sometimes it gives me a headache just remembering it. Just kidding, never been a problem.
Unlike the Hollywood portrayal (except maybe George Clooney’s talk to his men in Three Kings), the bullet being in your body is not the problem. It’s been sterilized in the barrel and from its flight through the atmosphere.
Nor, strictly speaking, is the fact that it put a hole in you. I mean other than the fact that the hole might also have passed through vital organs and severed blood vessels. From what I’ve read, doctors will typically NOT close up the hole so that it can heal from the inside - out.
The problem is from the bullet’s trip into you where it can rupture organs, shatter bone and sever blood vessels, all potentially causing a rapid death or crippling injury. Assuming you survive that, there is the potential risk of death from infection. Not from the bullet itself, but from bile, fecal matter or other bodily fluids being where they shouldn’t or just general infections people get from an exposed wound. Maybe also from bits of debris pulled into the wound by the bullet. I’m not sure about that part.
Longer term, you may have to deal with the loss of functionality in any organs that were damaged by the bullet.
Or maybe Hollywood is right and all you need to do is dig out the bullet and close up the hole with something and you’ll be ready to kick ass again in a few minutes.
And by “surgery” do you mean taking gunpowder from another bullet, putting it in the hole and lighting it on fire to cauterize the wound? In severe cases, using a syringe (or pen or other implement) to remove excess air from the chest cavity?
Yikes. It must be difficult going through life with a car door embedded in you!
And when someone asks him for a jar of something.
Nah, the real reason Teddy didn’t have the bullet removed is that, if they had tried, his body would have forced it out so violently that it would have ended up shooting one of the doctors, a fate that was only prevented by the intervening invulnerable barrier of Roosevelt flesh. Totally true fact that I just made up.
Both Garfield and McKinley died mainly because of the infection produced by their wounds, rather than the damage done by the bullet itself. In Garfield’s case in particular the repeated probing of his wound by doctors with unsterilized fingers and instruments as they searched for the bullet helped promote the infection that killed him. He might have done better if they had just patched him up and never tried to find the bullet.
The truthiness of your fact is very high on the truthiness scale. As bad asses go Chuck acknowledges Teddy’s superiority and only Old Hickory was actually as tough and he was a total ass beside a bad ass.
LOLOL. Well. As a retired E.M.T. I can deal in facts and not hyperbole.
I know nothing of cauterizing wounds that way.
I can state as a fact that New York state the EMT training includes emergency field treatment for a sucking chest wound that includes use of a needle, and I can inform that I know how to do an emergency tracheotomy in the street using a hard piece of tubing or ballpoint pen.
Not made up. Just the facts.
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Indeed. Here’s a fascinating article by Ronald Reagan’s physician on how he would have treated Presidential shootings in the past. Note, in the Garfield section, he says he probably wouldn’t have removed the bullet because its location (back muscle) posed no imminent threat–and using surgery and anesthesia would be more risky than the bullet itself.
And there were thousands of Civil War veterans with bullets and shrapnel lodged in their bodies alive at that time, so they should have known better.
It’s really annoying how many otherwise fine movies are damaged by the “must remove bullet” trope. Doubly so because, as noted, they amateur surgeons never repair the real damage (sew up blood vessels, replace lost blood, whatever) once the bullet has plinked into the dish.
To really make you mad, go read “Destiny of the Republic”. I want to invent a time machine just to go back and beat those “doctors” with a club. European doctors knew about germs and the need for cleanliness while operating, but the American doctors knew better! They weren’t going to let any quiche-eating eurotrash folk tell THEM how to practice medicine! They knew washing hands and tools made things worse. A doctor who was clean and not covered with blood and guts obviously wasn’t much of a doctor.
The rear of the bullet is briefly exposed to the searing heat of the propellant, but do the sides of the bullet make firm enough contact with the gun barrel to be reliably stripped of microbes?
And does the atmosphere (moving past at several hundred m/s) really strip the front of the bullet clean as well?
I heard the bullet never gave Teddy any trouble because it instantly recognized his superior lethality and fell in love with him.