The lungs
soon became gangrenous, and in this horrible state the patient
lived twelve days. One of the curious facts noticed by the
ancient writers was the amelioration of the symptoms caused by
thoracic wounds after hemorrhage from other locations; and
naturally, in the treatment of such injuries, this circumstance
was used in advocacy of depletion. Monro speaks of a gentleman
who was wounded in a duel, and who had all the symptoms of
hemothorax; his condition was immediately relieved by the
evacuation of a considerable quantity of bloody matter with the
urine. Swammerdam records a similar case, and Fabricius ab
Aquapendente noticed a case in which the opening in the thorax
showed immediate signs of improvement after the patient voided
large quantities of bloody urine. Glandorp also calls attention
to the foregoing facts. Nicolaus Novocomensis narrates the
details of the case of one of his friends, suffering from a
penetrating wound of the thorax, who was relieved and ultimately
cured by a bloody evacuation with the stool.
There is an extraordinary recovery reported in a boy of fifteen
who, by falling into the machinery of an elevator, was severely
injured about the chest. There were six extensive lacerations,
five through the skin about six inches long, and one through the
chest about eight inches long.
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