18th Century Gun Question

I'm not quite sure exactly what your question is, but if your story needs the character not to die, there's nothing in what you've written that makes it impossible for him to live. As long as you avoid giving him a wound that would cause him to bleed to death on the spot or rupture all his vital organs, there's no reason he couldn't eventually recover from a pistol shot in the side/abdomen. Granted he's likely to have some very unpleasant weeks before he's on his feet again -- there will be pain, and pus, and the characters who save him will certainly have their work cut out -- but you know, more than a few people did manage to survive serious wounds in the 18th century even though most people did not.

The main sticking point for me would be getting him attention in a timely way, since if you leave him out there bleeding on the heath with a belly wound and no one around to help the odds against him get a great deal longer.

So you have him pass out from bleeding, and the next day someone finds him and hauls him to a physician down the river. And eventually he will recover from the infection. I can believe that. The most difficult part is recovery from infection.

If you want that to become a little less likely to cause a reader to be annoyed, then have the bullet not go into the abdomen but to travel between skin and ribs around to the guy's far side. He could still have blood loss and lose consciousness, but not having internal injuries would leave him in much better shape.

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

A Queen Anne pistol is appropriate for the period, and frankly, I'd believe he survived getting shot easier than I would getting stabbed. The worst potential problem is lead poisoning...provided the shot doesn't hit a vital organ, but is a flesh wound.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Treatment for this kind of wound is dicey, anything penetrating abdomen is tough in the time frame given. It's technically easier to recover from a chest wound, as the likelihood of infection or sepsis is reduced.

That said, the term Queen Anne Pistol has a lot of variables. There were some very popular pocket size guns, usually referred to as coat guns or coat pocket guns (they must have had big pockets back then though...) that fit your needs. Loaded with a single ball, in the hand of a right handed shooter, it's quite conceivable the ball could enter just under the victim's left side rib cage and then lodge near the surface or even penetrate out of the body.

The major infectious concern with a wound that does not penetrate the digestive organs, intestines or bowels is what the ball carries with it. Recovering the projectile plus any pieces of clothing lodged in the wound will go a long way to preventing infection. Lead poisoning from a gun shot wound doesn't happen and the projectile itself is pretty sterile, so decent after care, wrapping in clean linen and changing bandages, will likely suffice. Not above the skill of any rural housewife who has raised a family.

If you need your character to pass out, blood loss shouldn't be the cause. Shock is much more benign, blood loss would result in a lot of other issues and hinder recovery as well as increase chances of fatality.

Write it believably, without a lot of technical detail, and it will fit your story just fine.

Jeff

Siri Kirpal said:

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

A Queen Anne pistol is appropriate for the period, and frankly, I'd believe he survived getting shot easier than I would getting stabbed. The worst potential problem is lead poisoning...provided the shot doesn't hit a vital organ, but is a flesh wound.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

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Actually lead poisoning from shrapnel or shot isn't really a thing. It would take an awful lot. It has to do with the pH of soft tissue. Now eating lead is a problem, as well as breathing the fumes from molten lead.

The real issue with the scene is that it is not really possible to load, prime and fire a flintlock on the sly especially with someone near you. Also Flintlocks are easy to undercharge (not use enough powder) and it was common for ammunition to not be seated properly so weren't as deadly as muskets. There's a reason flintlocks stopped being the go to weapon of war.

WeaselFire said:

Treatment for this kind of wound is dicey, anything penetrating abdomen is tough in the time frame given. It's technically easier to recover from a chest wound, as the likelihood of infection or sepsis is reduced.

The major infectious concern with a wound that does not penetrate the digestive organs, intestines or bowels is what the ball carries with it. Recovering the projectile plus any pieces of clothing lodged in the wound will go a long way to preventing infection. Lead poisoning from a gun shot wound doesn't happen and the projectile itself is pretty sterile, so decent after care, wrapping in clean linen and changing bandages, will likely suffice. Not above the skill of any rural housewife who has raised a family.

If you need your character to pass out, blood loss shouldn't be the cause. Shock is much more benign, blood loss would result in a lot of other issues and hinder recovery as well as increase chances of fatality.

Write it believably, without a lot of technical detail, and it will fit your story just fine.

Jeff

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No, not really. Even with black powder weapons, the powder is an incendiary. In short the projectiles get hot enough that the bullets themselves are effectively sterile. Where the infections come in is the crap on the person's skin that then gets pushed in or secondary infections. Bullet wounds inflicted on people with good hygiene and don't penetrate the GI tract generally don't get infected.

Also in the 1700's it was common for people to wear heavy wool which in the case of a low velocity round from a flintlock actually did provide at least some armor and slowed the velocity of the projectiles.

Just to add to what everyone else has said:

I disagree with your assessment that his chances of death are 99%. Plenty of people survived gunshot wounds, so it is very much within the realm of possibility that your character could and would survive the wounding.

In those days, if a gunshot didn't kill you outright (heart, head, etc), and if the bullet hadn't hit a vital organ (such as the kidney) that would eventually kill you (hours or days) then your greatest threat was dying of infection or disease. While Stonewall Jackson's death was a little later than the time period you are considering, the weapons and medical treatment were largely the same. He was shot 3 times and lived a week, surviving the amputation of his arm. It was pneumonia that killed him because his immune system was so weak.

If you saw the movie Master and Commander, there is a good scene (spoilers) where the doctor is accidentally shot. During the surgery, the big concern is making sure they remove the bit of cloth that the shot took with it inside the doctor's body. The shot itself would have been sterile from the heat, but the cloth would not have been.
There are stories of men who lived long lives with bits of shrapnel and musket balls still lodged in their bodies.

Finally, there is the true story of Alexis St. Martin. He was a fur trader who was at Fort Mackinac, in Michigan, and was accidentally shot at point blank range by a musket in 1822. An Army doctor treated him, expecting him to die, but to everyone's surprise, Alexis lived. Of course he lived with a permanent fistula in his stomach, a hole in which the doctor was able to watch the process of digestion (yuck). Anyway, Alexis lived until 1880.

Long story short, getting shot in those days wasn't a death sentence. A lot of it was luck. Was the skin clean prior to the wounding? Other than the shot, were there any foreign objects inserted into the wound (bits of wood or cloth for instance)? Is the patient receiving medical care to stave off secondary disease? And so on.

culmo80 said:

If you saw the movie Master and Commander, there is a good scene (spoilers) where the doctor is accidentally shot. During the surgery, the big concern is making sure they remove the bit of cloth that the shot took with it inside the doctor's body. The shot itself would have been sterile from the heat, but the cloth would not have been.
There are stories of men who lived long lives with bits of shrapnel and musket balls still lodged in their bodies.

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Yeah, even well into the 1800's it was not uncommon for doctors to just leave bullets in the body rather than risk removing them.

To echo what GeorgeK said, I think that a misfire might be your best friend. That would mitigate the speed of the bullet and the extent of the injury.

~Thalia said:

I had been thinking that it was possible to load the gun before leaving? Or am I mistaken? And I had been wondering about the bullet thing, and I think ultimately they'll remove the cloth but leave the bullet alone.

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It was common practice to carry pistols loaded, usually two or three together.

Absolutely the gun would be loaded before leaving. With those old pistols, loading was a tedious process, even for the most experienced. Not something you'd do in the heat of the moment unless left without a choice.

Actually, at the time, it was fairly common practice to go digging for the ball, if it wasn't in a specially lethal position. Not because they were worried about the lead, but because of the bits of (usually) filthy clothing it took with it. Good hygiene was more of the exception than the rule during the time period in question. (Others have brought this up, but it was a BIG deal). Often the cloth would end up wrapped around the ball, requiring extraction to avoid infection. There's a reason men went out of their way to wear fresh shirts to a duel, or even into battle when they could.

For your purposes, if the character takes a ball to the shoulder, chest (as already suggested), or a limb, their chances of survival would be fairly good, depending on the quality of care.

The other route you could take is have the ball go right through, rather than lodging in the body. It was less common then than in later periods, but getting shot-through was not unheard of. The nice thing about that kind of wound (for a writer), is that it requires a minimum of description when it comes to medical care. Mainly, clean the channel, then bandage entry and exit wounds.

~Thalia said:

So, I want to say that I apologize for over-exaggerating with the death thing. :/ I tend to over-exaggerate, and I knew it wasn't that bad, but I had read a lot beforehand that was pessimistic about odds of survival, so I was somewhat pessimistic then.



I had been thinking that it was possible to load the gun before leaving? Or am I mistaken? And I had been wondering about the bullet thing, and I think ultimately they'll remove the cloth but leave the bullet alone.
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Actually, having the weapon pre-loaded might work in your favor. It wasn't altogether uncommon for the priming pan to leak just a bit. There was also the possibility of moisture corruption of either the priming powder or the actual charge.

The Queen Anne used a patched ball. It was not uncommon for shooters to lubricate the patch with spit before loading. A slobbery patch might foul the powder.

Another common problem was fouling from previous shots clogging the touch hole. Part of the 'possibles' kits for those old weapons was a pick specifically designed to clear that hole. Touch off a round with that hole plugged, and the powder charge will never know it's supposed to go off.

Having the antagonist hoist a pistol out, press it up against the protagonist's stomach, and pull the trigger would serve to cement his evilness every bit as well as actually wounding him. If the pistol barrel was pressed to the stomach rather than, say, chest, it would heighten the evil of the act, as it was common knowledge back then that stomach wounds were the most lethal and excruciatingly painful, not to mention lingering, way to go.

A snap of the cock flying forward, a scrape of flint against frizzen, a great, fizzy puff of smoke aaaaand nothing. Antagonist looks down at pistol, back up, and shrugs. "Terribly sorry, old boy. That wasn't at all what was supposed to happen."

There were also common mistakes made when loading weapons in a hurry, even beyond forgetting to pick the touch hole. Say the antagonist hadn't the time to casually and meticulously load the weapon in advance. It was not uncommon for folk to forget the powder charge, or to forget the priming charge. Either would do for your scenario. (I will confess that I've loaded the occasional cartridge without powder while watching TV and reloading ammunition. It's a right sporty feeling, as a modern primer will get the bullet halfway down a pistol barrel even without gunpowder and any followup shot will tend to be exciting!)

ETA: Another factor in powder corruption is storage well before it's even loaded into the piece. The powder might not be much (if at all) good before it's even loaded. This wouldn't necessarily prevent the priming charge from going off, since those old cavernous bore pistols often used a separate grind of powder for priming than for charging.

As for incapacitating the protagonist while he makes his escape, the brass butt caps you see on many of those old pistols was there because common usage called for a single shot before reversing the weapon, holding it by the barrel and using it as a short club. If the pistol failed to go off, the antagonist could quickly flip it and clobber the protagonist while that worthy was still trying to adjust to the betrayal.