Notwithstanding that the spear measured
seven inches, and the interference of treatment, the abdominal
wound closed on the sixth day, and recovery was uninterrupted.
Gilkrist mentions an instance in which a ramrod was fired into a
soldier's abdomen, its extremity lodging in the spinal column,
without causing the slightest evidence of wounds of the
intestines or viscera. A minute postmortem examination was held
some time afterward, the soldier having died by drowning, but the
results were absolutely negative as regards any injury done by
the passage of the ramrod.
Humphreys says that a boy of eleven, while "playing soldier" with
another boy, accidentally fell on a rick-stake. The stake was
slightly curved at its upper part, being 43 inches long and three
inches in circumference, and sharp-pointed at its extremity. As
much as 17 1/2 inches entered the body of the lad. The stake
entered just in front of the right spermatic cord, passed beneath
Poupart's ligament into the cavity of the abdomen, traversed the
whole cavity across to the left side; it then entered the thorax
by perforating the diaphragm, displaced the heart by pushing it
to the right of the sternum, and pierced the left lung.
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