Velpeau
mentions a fork which was passed from the anus twenty months
after it was swallowed. Wilson mentions an instance of gastrotomy
which was performed for the extraction of a fork swallowed
sixteen years before. There is an interesting case in which, in a
delirium of typhoid fever, a girl of twenty-two swallowed two
iron forks, which were subsequently expelled through an abdominal
abscess. A French woman of thirty-five, with suicidal intent,
swallowed a four-pronged fork, which was removed four years
afterward from the thigh. For two years she had suffered intense
pain in both thighs. In the Royal College of Surgeons in London
there is a steel button-hook 3 1/2 inches in length which was
accidentally swallowed, and was passed three weeks later by the
anus, without having given rise to any symptom.
Among the insane a favorite trait seems to be swallowing nails.
In the Philosophical Transactions is an account of the contents
of the stomach of an idiot who died at thirty-three. In this
organ were found nine cart-wheel nails, six screws, two pairs of
compasses, a key, an iron pin, a ring, a brass pommel weighing
nine ounces, and many other articles. The celebrated Dr. Lettsom,
in 1802, spoke of an idiot who swallowed four pounds of old nails
and a pair of compasses.
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