Injuries to the
intestines themselves have already been spoken of, but there are
several cases of evisceration worthy of record.
Doughty says that at midnight on June 7, 1868, he was called to
see a man who had been stabbed in a street altercation with a
negro. When first seen in the street, the patient was lying on
his back with his abdomen exposed, from which protruded an
enormous mass of intestines, which were covered with sand and
grit; the small intestine (ileum) was incised at one point and
scratched at another by the passing knife. The incision, about an
inch in length, was closed with a single stitch of silk thread,
and after thorough cleansing the whole mass was returned to the
abdominal cavity. In this hernial protrusion were recognized four
or five feet of the ileum, the cecum with its appendix, part of
the ascending colon with corresponding portions of the mesentery;
the distribution of the superior mesentery, made more apparent by
its living pulsation, was more beautifully displayed in its
succession of arches than in any dissection that Doughty had ever
witnessed. Notwithstanding the extent of his injuries the patient
recovered, and at last reports was doing finely.
Barnes reports the history of a negro of twenty-five who was
admitted to the Freedmen's Hospital, New Orleans, May 15, 1867,
suffering from an incised wound of the abdomen, from which
protruded eight inches of colon, all of the stomach, and nearly
the whole of the small intestines.
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