gtoast99
Forum Supporter
Trust me, I get it. We all want all of our finds to be something special, unique, rare, different, more-meaningful, etc. But without evidence to support it, its just a wild conjecture. Hence, the whole "it looks like a colonial sword hanger to me!" thread from way back when. And I'm not saying a chewed bullet is a bad find - any day I can find something from the Civil War is a great day, regardless of condition! But sometimes, no matter how much we want to ascribe a higher significance to an item, we simply lack the evidence to make that claim. There is no evidence to say that these chewed up bullets were used for pain, and scant evidence that the vast majority were even chewed by humans rather than some other animal.
Thanks! It was an incredibly rewarding experience, and I highly recommend it if anyone out there gets the chance.
Well, they were chewed. That's about the extent of what we can say, without having witnessed the actual chewing or having some specialized training in forensic dentistry. Most experts believe that the majority of such "pain bullets" were actually chewed by animals.
True enough. But which sounds more dogmatic to you. That we don't know that they were used for a specific purpose, and there is no historical record of them being used for that purpose, so we should not ascribe that purpose to them. Or that we should ascribe a particular purpose to the dug relic without any evidence supporting that assertion. You talked about Occam's razor before. It simply doesn't make sense that such a widespread practice (judging from the number of such bullets found) would not once appear in any of the millions of Civil War letters, diaries, and recollections.
But we can agree, it's your bullet, you can call it whatever you want. As you so eloquently put it, "doesn't make it so."
He's not just some joe schmo with a video camera. He's Executive Director of the Museum of Civil War Medicine. I'd say that qualifies him to speak on the subject. And there's plenty more experts where he came from, all reaching the same conclusions. It's possible that a tiny minority of chewed bullets may have been used for pain, but we will never know for any individual bullet, and the vast majority were likely animal chewed.
Thanks! It was an incredibly rewarding experience, and I highly recommend it if anyone out there gets the chance.
Well, they were chewed. That's about the extent of what we can say, without having witnessed the actual chewing or having some specialized training in forensic dentistry. Most experts believe that the majority of such "pain bullets" were actually chewed by animals.
True enough. But which sounds more dogmatic to you. That we don't know that they were used for a specific purpose, and there is no historical record of them being used for that purpose, so we should not ascribe that purpose to them. Or that we should ascribe a particular purpose to the dug relic without any evidence supporting that assertion. You talked about Occam's razor before. It simply doesn't make sense that such a widespread practice (judging from the number of such bullets found) would not once appear in any of the millions of Civil War letters, diaries, and recollections.
But we can agree, it's your bullet, you can call it whatever you want. As you so eloquently put it, "doesn't make it so."
He's not just some joe schmo with a video camera. He's Executive Director of the Museum of Civil War Medicine. I'd say that qualifies him to speak on the subject. And there's plenty more experts where he came from, all reaching the same conclusions. It's possible that a tiny minority of chewed bullets may have been used for pain, but we will never know for any individual bullet, and the vast majority were likely animal chewed.
