- flammation of the peritonæum. Sometimes the irritating substance
perforates the skin and muscles as well as the intestines, and escapes outwardly; and a few individuals have even recovered under these circumstances. An excellent account of the ordinary course of such accidents is given in the London Medical and Physical Journal. The person swallowed a chocolate bean, and after experiencing many uneasy sensations throughout the belly for several days, was attacked with peritonitis and died.[1] Mr. Howship has related the particulars of the case of a woman, died after two years of constant suffering, in consequence of having swallowed a large quantity of cherry-stones.[2] Dr. Marcet has also described the case of a sailor who died in a similar way after swallowing several large clasp-knives.[3] Thus too, although it is a familiar fact, that needles and pins are in general swallowed with impunity, death nevertheless sometimes arises from this cause. Guersent mentions the case of a child who died in the course of two months of frequent vomiting caused by swallowing a pin, which was found after death pinning the stomach, as it were, to the liver.[4] Dupuytren relates the case of a woman, who, after swallowing an incredible number of needles and pins, became very lean and was confined to bed by the excruciating pain excited on motion by the needles and pins escaping through the skin. There were seldom less than fifty tumours or abscesses on various parts of the body; and Dupuytren, on opening about a hundred of these, invariably found one or more needles or pins in each. She laboured under general debility, irritative fever, and marasmus, and at length died hectic. After death many hundred pins and needles were found among the muscles and viscera.[5] Many other examples might be referred to, but these will suffice for information on the ordinary effects of mechanical irritants of the kind under consideration.
From the case of Dr. Marcet and other similar facts, it appears that large and even angular bodies do not always cause serious mischief, nay, that they have been frequently swallowed without any material injury. Dr. Marcet's sailor in the course of his life had repeatedly swallowed several clasp-knives in quick succession: and nevertheless recovered perfectly after some days of slight illness. As to prune and cherry-stones, buttons, coins, needles, pins, and the like, they have been very often taken, and even sometimes in large quantities, without any harm. It is indeed extraordinary, and almost incredible, if the facts were not authenticated beyond the possibility of a doubt, how much mechanical irritation the alimentary canal has been subjected to, without sustaining any injury. Mr. Wakefield mentions that a man, who was committed to the House of Correction, swallowed seven half-crowns, to prevent the prison authorities from depriving him of them. He suffered no inconvenience for twenty months;
