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Femur & Musket Ball

This month we are looking at objects associated with the Battle of Waterloo. This specimen is the upper end of a right femur (thigh bone), from a soldier wounded by a musket ball on June 18th 1815. It was probably taken after the soldier’s death and he may have died as a result of it. The impact of the musket ball has created a deep cavity in the bone in which the ball is almost completely embedded.

Some soldiers were operated on at the site of the battle, with survival rates varying from 95% for a forearm down to 65% for a thigh. However one of the major killers of wounded soldiers was not the injury itself but rather the infection that often followed in the days and weeks later. Battlefields were dirty places and this musket ball would have carried bits of cloth from the soldier’s uniform into the joint, along with any dirt and bacteria on it. Without proper cleaning (or knowledge of bacteria at this time), the wound would have become infected. In this case, it appears septic arthritis has occurred. The bone around the musket ball has begun to break down as part of the body’s inflammatory reaction to infection, hence why the cavity is larger than the projectile.

This object has appeared online as part of the 200 Objects of Waterloo series