ABSTRACT
A case of gunshot injury to the femoral vein, remarkable not only for its surgical interest, but also for the peculiar way in which it was caused, is related in the Lyon Medical for 1895. An artist aged thirty six used to keep a shell in his studio as a relic of the war of 1870, believing it to be uncharged. On August 3rd, 1894, having lighted a cigarette, he threw down the unextinguished match, when by chance it entered the narrow mouth of the projectile, which very soon afterwards exploded, one of the fragments impinging on the heedless smoker’s right inguino-crural region and producing violent haemorrhage.
