This North Carolina Confederate carried shrapnel in his sinus cavities for years and suffered severe headaches, until the day he "sneezed" the shell fragments out.

Alfred Newton Proffitt of Wilkes County, NC served as a Private in Co.D 18th NC. Only one of four brothers to survive the war. Until the 1880's he was plagued with violent headaches. In a letter home following the Battle of the Wilderness he wrote he was struck by a piece of a shell "just above my right eye, and split me to the skull about three inches."
He was plagued by severe headaches until the late 1880's. One day he sneezed rather hard and from his sinuses fell that souvenir from May, 1864. His headaches were suddenly cured. He lived till 1929, and was the grandfather of 31.