Latin's a dead language...

          This one is on me. The joke, that is. I’ll cook some eggs and dump them on my own face.

          I spent three days in the Auburn University library this week, reading through some Confederate Army medical records. I jumped at the chance when the opportunity presented itself.

          Who wouldn’t?

          The information I gathered was not what I was looking for but it was interesting anyway. On the final day, I noticed something I had seen before but did not understand: Vulnus sclopet.

Earlier in the week I ignored the new piece of information but on the final day, it hit me over the head. It was listed as the complaint for hundreds of soldiers by the hospital I was studying that day. Every member of the military unit I am researching that arrived at the hospital in question appearently complained of vulnus sclopet.

Until I saw the sudden spike in the incidence of vulnus sclopet, diarrhea was the leading cause of Confederate soldiers visiting hospitals. Diarrhea was a frequent cause of death for soldiers on both sides of that war. Neither army was especially accomplished in the area of mass sanitation.

I was very excited to note the high incidence of vulnus sclopet because I couldn’t remember reading anything about this obviously dangerous malady. I figured I had stumbled upon an untapped field of study. Visions of instant recognition within the Civil War study community raced through my mind. I’d be published, give speeches and be one of those oft-quoted experts you see on Civil War television specials.

My blog would gain readership!

Finally, I could stand the excitement no further and I stepped briskly to the desk to ask the nice woman in charge to use her computer to learn the meaning of this term, vulnus sclopet. I was certain the origin was Latin and I was right.

It turns out that vulnus sclopet is short for vulnus sclopetarium and it means gunshot wound. The soldiers were in the hospital with because they’d been shot. They’d been shot during the battle I am researching. A lot of soldiers were shot during that battle. Those that were shot and survived went to the hospital, where they were diagnosed as having a condition the doctors called vulnus sclopet.

Fame would not be knocking upon my door anytime soon.

“Why,” I asked the librarian, “didn’t the doctors simply write ‘gunshot’ in the column where the complaint is listed?”

“I guess they were pompous, even back then,” she answered.

Librarians are seldom wrong about anything.

Thanks for reading.