There is a case in which a fisherman, having
both hands engaged in drawing a net, and seeing a sole-fish about
eight inches long trying to escape through the meshes of the net,
seized it with his teeth. A sudden convulsive effort of the fish
enabled it to enter the fisherman's throat, and he was
asphyxiated before his boat reached the shore. After death the
fish was found in the cardiac end of the stomach. There is
another case of a man named Durand, who held a mullet between his
teeth while rebaiting his hook. The fish, in the convulsive
struggles of death, slipped down the throat, and because of the
arrangement of its scales it could be pushed down but not up;
asphyxiation, however, ensued. Stewart has extensively described
the case of a native "Puckally" of Ceylon who was the victim of
the most distressing symptoms from the impaction of a living fish
in his throat. The native had caught the fish, and in order to
extract it placed its head between his teeth, holding the body
with the left hand and the hook with the right. He had hardly
extracted the hook, when the fish pricked his palm with his long
and sharp dorsal fin, causing him suddenly to release his grasp
on the fish and voluntarily open his mouth at the same time.
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