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under severe intestinal inflammation, with incessant vomiting and excruciating pain over the whole belly ; he died at night. The pot was two inches and three-eighths in diameter at the brim, an inch and a half at its base, and two inches and an eighth in depth.

Medico-Chirurgical

In the first volume of the Transactions,' Mr. Thomas relates the following case: "A gentleman, of an inactive and sedentary disposition, had for many years suffered from constipated bowels, which increased to that degree that the most active cathartics failed in producing the desired effect. By the advice of a practitioner, whom he consulted in Paris, he daily introduced into the rectum a piece of flexible cane (about a finger's thickness), where it was allowed to remain until the desire to evacuate the fæces came on. This plan succeeded so well that for more than a twelvemonth he never had occasion to

resort to any other means. One morning, being anxious to fulfil a particular engagement in good time, in his hurry he passed the stick farther up, and with less caution than usual, when it was suddenly sucked up into the body, beyond the reach of his fingers. This accident did not interrupt the free discharge of the fæces, and the same evacuation regularly took place every day, whilst the stick remained in the gut. It was seven days afterwards

when I first saw him: he was in a very distressed state, with every symptom of fever, tension of the abdomen, and a countenance expressive of the greatest anxiety. His relatives and friends were totally ignorant of the real nature of the case; and nothing less than the urgency of his sufferings could ever have prevailed upon him to disclose it to me. Such were

his feelings on the occasion, that a violent hysteric fit was brought on by the mere recital of what he termed his folly.

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Upon examination no part of the cane could be discovered; but one end of it was readily felt projecting, as it were, through the parietes of the abdomen, midway between the ilium and the umbilicus on the left side. The slightest pressure upon this part gave him exquisite pain. After repeated trials, I was at length enabled, with a bougie, to feel one extremity of the stick lodged high up in the rectum; but without being able to lay hold of it with the stone forceps. To allay the irritation for the present, an emollient clyster, with Tinct. Opii, 3ij, was given, which passed without the least impediment, and did not return. On the next examination, two hours after, I found the sphincter ani considerably dilated, and, by a continued perseverance to increase it, the relaxation became so complete that in about twenty minutes, I was enabled to introduce one finger after the other, until

the whole hand was engaged in the rectum. I found the bottom of the stick jammed in the hollow of the sacrum, but, by bending the body forward, it was readily disengaged and extracted. Its length was nine inches and a half, with one extremity very ragged and uneven.

"For several days after, the situation of the patient was highly critical, the local injury, joined to the perturbation of his mind, brought on symptoms truly alarming. At length I had the satisfaction of witnessing his complete recovery; and he has ever since, more than two years, enjoyed good health, and the regular action of the bowels, without the assistance of medicine, or any other aid."

A man, æt. seventy-three, was admitted into the St. Marylebone Infirmary. He was delirious, and made his complaints very incoherently. He said there was a stick in his rectum, but no further information could be gained from him. He was seen by Mr. B. Phillips, who suggested that the sensation of something in the rectum might be caused by the enlarged prostate, and that in his delirious condition the sensation of a foreign body was sufficient to impress upon his mind the idea that it was a stick. He died the day after his admission; and upon a postmortem examination being made a stick rounded at each end was found, its superior extremity had pene

trated through the sigmoid flexure of the colon into the peritoneal cavity.*

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In the thirtieth volume of the Medical Gazette '+ is an account of a Greenwich pensioner, who was admitted into the infirmary on the 20th of October, 1814, having eight days previously introduced a large plug of wood into the rectum for the purpose of stopping a diarrhoea. It was with great difficulty extracted by Mr. M'Laughlan, surgeon to Greenwich Hospital.

In June, 1842, a man, æt. sixty, was brought to King's College Hospital, labouring under obstruction of the bowels, which he attributed to having eaten a large quantity of peas six days previously. He expired while being carried in a chair up to the ward.

On examining the body after death upwards of a pint of gray peas was found in the rectum: they had been swallowed without mastication, and had undergone no alteration in passing through the alimentary canal, except becoming swollen by warmth and the absorption of moisture. The urethra was pressed

upon, and he had had retention of urine for four days. The bladder was enormously distended, its

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apex reaching the umbilicus, and its base nearly filling the brim of the pelvis.*

Mr. Listont removed from the rectum half a jawbone of a rabbit, which had been swallowed in a plate

of curry.

Mr. Lawrence had a case in which a man had broken the neck of a wine-bottle into his rectum; he gradually dilated the sphincter, introduced his whole hand, and removed it.

Mr. Fergusson removed a bougie from the rectum of an old gentleman who was in the habit of using such an instrument: on one occasion he passed the bougie within the sphincter, and could not withdraw it. Several unsuccessful attempts had been made to remove it, previous to Mr. Fergusson seeing the patient with some difficulty he succeeded in seizing the end with a pair of lithotomy forceps, and withdrawing it. The bougie was nine inches in length, and an inch in diameter.

* Medical Gazette,' vol. xxx., pp. 605, 606.

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p. 431.

Practical Surgery,' by Robert Liston, Fourth Edition, 1846,

Practical Surgery,' Third Edition, p. 750.

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