On postmortem examination, a sharp piece of
wood about two inches long, corresponding to the missing portion
of the broken mirror handle, was found lying between the
posterior wall of the esophagus and the spine. Hennig mentions a
case of gunshot wound of the neck in which the musket ball was
lodged in the posterior portion of the neck and was subsequently
discharged by the anus.
Injuries of the cervical vertebrae, while extremely grave, and
declared by some authors to be inevitably fatal, are, however,
not always followed by death or permanently bad results. Barwell
mentions a man of sixty-three who, in a fit of despondency, threw
himself from a window, having fastened a rope to his neck and to
the window-sill. He fell 11 or 12 feet, and in doing so suffered
a subluxation of the 4th cervical vertebra. It slowly resumed the
normal position by the elasticity of the intervertebral
fibrocartilage, and there was complete recovery in ten days.
Lazzaretto reports the history of the case of a seaman whose
atlas was dislocated by a blow from a falling sail-yard. The
dislocation was reduced and held by adhesive strips, and the man
made a good recovery. Vanderpool of Bellevue Hospital, N.Y.,
describes a fracture of the odontoid process caused by a fall on
the back of the head; death, however, did not ensue until six
months later.
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