‘The Slight Effect of Little Bullets’: Challenges to Established Military and Medical Certainties During the ‘Lethality Panic’ of the 1890s

Abstract

This article discusses developments in military rifle ammunition at the end of the nineteenth century. It extends and challenges existing scholarship by showing how claims about the efficiency and humanity of ‘modern’ bullets were quickly challenged by soldiers and doctors in many nations. It shows why some imperial powers believed they faced particular challenges that required bullets designed to cause huge damage to supposedly ‘uncivilised’ bodies and how their fears were exacerbated by difficulties in measuring bullet effectiveness. Finally it will show how these concerns were stemmed by further technological change and the horrors of the Great War.