There is an instance in a young girl in which a piece of pencil
remained in the right ear for seven years. Haug speaks of two
beads lying in the auditory canal for twenty-eight years without
causing any harm.
A boy of six introduced a carob-nut kernel into each ear. On the
next day incompetent persons attempted to extract the kernel from
the left side, but only caused pain and hemorrhage. The nut
issued spontaneously from the right side. In the afternoon the
auditory canal was found excoriated and red, and deep in the
meatus the kernel was found, covered with blood. The patient had
been so excited and pained by the bungling attempts at extraction
that the employment of instruments was impossible; prolonged
employment of injections was substituted. Discharge from the ear
commenced, intense fever and delirium ensued, and the patient had
to be chloroformed to facilitate the operation of extraction. The
nut, when taken out, was found to have a consistency much larger
than originally, caused by the agglutination of wax and blood.
Unfortunately the symptoms of meningitis increased; three days
after the operation coma followed, and on the next day death
ensued. In 75 cases collected by Mayer, and cited by Poulet
(whose work on "Foreign Bodies" is the most extensive in
existence), death as a consequence of meningitis was found in
three.
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