#only mostly dead

But the SHORT version is: contrary to popular misconception, triangular bayonets are not specifically banned in the Geneva Convention.  They were actually on the way out by the time the GC happened in 1949.  There is, however, a case to be made that triangular blades are nonetheless in violation of the particular article of the GC that prohibits weapons and methods of war intended to cause “superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.”  (It’s Article 35 of the 1977 document if you want to look it up, they got it from the Hague Regulations.)

This is because triangular blades are for stabbing, and if you get stabbed with a triangular blade, you now have a puncture wound with three axes of injury.  This is a problem for a lot of reasons.  First of all, even if the blade goes directly in and out you still have a wound in a shape that is difficult to stitch closed without opening the other parts of the wound, and often struggles to scar over for the same reason.  As scar tissue “pulls” on the skin around it, it can open other parts of the triangular wound, which is why they were prone to infection even by the standards of the 1700s, when EVERYTHING was prone to infection.  Second of all, bayonets generally did NOT go straight in and out of a stabbing victim.  And once someone starts twisting a triangular blade in your abdomen, you’re pretty much dead already, you’re just going to suffer a lot before your heart stops.  Which is almost always true with that kind of wound, a triangular blade just makes it functionally impossible to treat.

And B, I am vividly remembering how tired I was writing this, including when my advisor was giving me comments and sent an email asking if I was getting enough sleep, due to a glaringly obvious error about antibiotics, and I responded with:

Hi Erin,

No.

replied to your post

“Sent my thesis to a couple of friends and I’m poking through it, and,...”

What was the name of that one guy you had problems researching? He had like, the most common of names i think.

JOHN MOTHERFUCKING JONES

His book is called “Plain Concise Practical Remarks on the Treatment of Wounds and Fractures: To Which Is Added, A Short Appendix on Camp and Military Hospitals; Principally Designed for the Use of Young Military Surgeons, in North-America” and it was published in 1775 and it took me literally months to find a way to read the actual book instead of just finding citations of the book, because it is ludicrously difficult to find one specific “JOHN FUCKING JONES” in 1775.