Afterward the
pulsation could be heard ten or 12 feet away. He died of another
attack of pneumonia fifteen years later and the heart was found
to be two or three times its natural size, soft and flabby, and,
on opening the right ventricle, a bullet was discovered embedded
in its walls. There was no scar of entrance discernible, though
the pericardium was adherent. Biffi of Milan describes the case
of a lunatic who died in consequence of gangrene of the tongue
from a bite in a paroxysm of mania. At the necropsy a needle, six
cm. in length, was found transfixing the heart, with which the
relatives of the deceased said he had stabbed himself twenty-two
months prior to his death. There is a collection of cases in
which bullets have been lodged in the heart from twenty to thirty
years.
Balch reports a case in which a leaden bullet remained twenty
years in the walls of the heart. Hamilton mentions an instance of
gunshot wound of the heart, in which for twenty years a ball was
embedded in the wall of the right ventricle, death ultimately
being caused by pneumonia. Needles have quite frequently been
found in the heart after death; Graves, Leaming, Martin, Neill,
Piorry, Ryerson, and others record such cases.
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