After a somewhat
protracted illness the patient recovered, notwithstanding the
extent of injury and the primitive mode of treatment.
Travers mentions the case of a woman of fifty-three who, with
suicidal intent, divided her abdominal parietes below the navel
with a razor, wounding the stomach in two places. Through the
wound protruded the greater part of the larger curvature of the
stomach; the arch of the colon and the entire greater omentum
were both strangulated. A small portion of the coats of the
stomach, including the wound, was nipped up, a silk ligature tied
about it, and the entrails replaced. Two months afterward the
patient had quite recovered, though the ligature of the stomach
had not been seen in the stool. Clements mentions a robust German
of twenty-two who was stabbed in the abdomen with a dirk,
producing an incised wound of the stomach. The patient recovered
and was returned to duty the following month.
There are many cases on record in which injury of the stomach has
been due to some mistake or accident in the juggling process of
knife-swallowing or sword-swallowing. The records of injuries of
this nature extend back many hundred years, and even in the
earlier days the delicate operation of gastrotomy, sometimes with
a successful issue, was performed upon persons who had swallowed
knives.
Pages:
1252
1253
1254
1255
1256
1257
1258
1259
1260
1261
1262
1263
1264
1265
1266
1267
1268
1269
1270
1271
1272
1273
1274
1275
1276