[War injuries of the thorax. Aggressors and wound balistics]

War chest wounds are very common, but wound balistic notions are not known of physicians. Different threats are being listed, and we might retain the important rate of shrapnels wounds. Concerning the bullet behavior in soft tissue, one can discern full jacketed war bullets which may tumble after a variable "neck", and non jacketed missiles which cause wound through "mushrooming" and/or fragmentation effect. Buckshot wounds obey the rule of "all or none". Body reactions, particularly the clash with a hard material like bone, may overturn everything described in soft tissues. Every kind of possible chest wounds are analyzed from a ballistic point of view. We insist on the effects of so called terrible high velocity little bullets which do not wound because of an "explosive" shock wave, but with a fragmentation effect. The treatment sums up to the advice of good common sense which has had such a good effect on our masters.