United States or France ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There are many cases on record in which injury of the stomach has been due to some mistake or accident in the juggling process of knife-swallowing or sword-swallowing. The records of injuries of this nature extend back many hundred years, and even in the earlier days the delicate operation of gastrotomy, sometimes with a successful issue, was performed upon persons who had swallowed knives.
In the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal for 1825 there is an account of a juggler who swallowed a knife which remained in his stomach and caused such intense symptoms that gastrotomy was advised; the patient, however, refused operation. Drake reports a curious instance of polyphagia. The person described was a man of twenty-seven who pursued the vocation of a "sword-swallower."
Velpeau mentions a fork which was passed from the anus twenty months after it was swallowed. Wilson mentions an instance of gastrotomy which was performed for the extraction of a fork swallowed sixteen years before. There is an interesting case in which, in a delirium of typhoid fever, a girl of twenty-two swallowed two iron forks, which were subsequently expelled through an abdominal abscess.
De Diemerbroeck mentions the fact that a knife ten inches long was extracted by gastrotomy, and placed among the rarities in the anatomic chamber of the University at Leyden. The operation was done in 1635 at Koenigsberg, by Schwaben, who for his surgical prowess was appointed surgeon to the King of Poland. The patient lived eight years after the operation.
Gastrotomy we have already spoken of. Pyloroplasty is an operation devised by Heineke and Mikulicz, and is designed to remove the mechanic obstruction in cicatricial stenoses of the pylorus, at the same time creating a new pylorus.
Bell of Davenport, Iowa, performed gastrotomy on a man, who, while attempting a feat of legerdemain, allowed a bar of lead, 10 1/8 inches long, 1 1/2 inches wide, and 9 1/2 ounces in weight, to slip into his stomach. The bar was removed and the patient recovered.
Gastrotomy was performed, and the piece of sword 11 inches long was extracted; as there was perforation of the stomach before the operation, the patient died of peritonitis. An hour after ingestion, Bernays of St. Louis successfully removed a knife 9 1/2 inches long. By means of an army-bullet forceps the knife was extracted easily through an incision 5/8 inch long in the walls of the stomach.
Two weeks later, gastro-peritoneal symptoms presented, and as the stick was located, gastrotomy was proposed; the patient, however, would not consent to an operation. On the twenty-sixth day an abscess formed on the left side below the nipple, and from it was discharged a large quantity of pus and blood.
The patient, a native of Prague, had swallowed a knife eight or nine inches long, which lay pointing at the superior portion of the stomach. After it had been lodged in this position for seven weeks and two days gastrotomy was performed, and the knife extracted; the patient recovered.
In The Lancet of December 10, 1881, there is an account of a vulcanite tooth-plate which was swallowed and passed forty-two hours later. Billroth mentions an instance of gastrotomy for the removal of swallowed artificial teeth, with recovery; and another case in which a successful esophagotomy was performed.
Word Of The Day