One
day, about 10.30 in the evening, when he had taken no supper, but
had eaten a rather hearty dinner, he was bothered by a peculiar
sensation in his stomach, and to relieve this he swallowed about
three tumbler-fuls of his usual infusion, but to no avail. He
then tried to excite vomiting by tickling the fauces, when, in
retching, he suddenly felt a violent pain; he diagnosed his own
case by saying that it was "the bursting of something near the
pit of the stomach." He became prostrated and died in eighteen
and one-half hours; at the necropsy it was seen that without any
previously existing signs of disease the esophagus had been
completely rent across in a transverse direction.
Schmidtmuller mentions separation of the esophagus from the
stomach; and Flint reports the history of a boy of seven who died
after being treated for worms and cerebral symptoms. After death
the contents of the stomach were found in the abdominal cavity,
and the esophagus was completely separated from the stomach.
Flint believed the separation was postmortem, and was possibly
due to the softening of the stomach by the action of the gastric
acids. In this connection may be mentioned the case reported by
Hanford of a man of twenty-three who had an attack of hematemesis
and melanema two years before death.
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