Medicine: . . . It Comes Out Here

Bruce Lamb, 17, was out rabbit hunting on the high plains near his home in Powell, Wyo. when one of his high school classmates accidentally plugged him in the back. The .22-cal. slug slammed into his left shoulder, about three in. left of his spine. At War Memorial Hospital, the family doctor, Ray Christensen, found that Bruce’s left lung had been punctured. He put a tube into the boy’s chest, drew off blood and reinflated the lung. But Dr. Christensen, to his puzzlement, could not find the bullet.

Bruce was soon well enough for the 90-mile ride to Billings, Mont. There X rays located the bullet — in Bruce’s left knee. Evidently the bullet had hit a rib, lost its momentum, entered the pulmonary vein carrying oxygenated blood from the lungs to the heart’s upper left chamber. Car ried along with the blood, the slug went through the mitral valve into the left ventricle and up through the aortic valve. It turned downward at the aorta’s arch in the upper chest, and traveled through the femoral artery until this became too nar row. Then the bullet stopped behind the left knee. Surgeons had no difficulty removing it. Military surgeons who treated hundreds of wartime wounded said that the case of Bruce’s unguided missile was a rarity indeed.