nd
Polisius mentions an abscess of the back from which was extracted a
grain of wheat three months after ingestion. Bally reports a somewhat
similar instance, in which, three months after ingestion, during an
attack of peripneumonia, a foreign body was extracted from an abscess
of the thorax, between the 2d and 3d ribs. Ambrose found a needle
encysted in the heart of a negress. She distinctly stated that she had
swallowed it at a time calculated to have been nine years before her
death. Planque speaks of a small bone perforating the esophagus and
extracted through the skin.

Abscess or ulceration, consequent upon periesophagitis, caused by the
lodgment of foreign bodies in the esophagus, often leads to the most
serious results. There is an instance of a soldier who swallowed a bone
while eating soup, who died on the thirty-first day from the rupture
internally of an esophageal abscess. Grellois has reported the history
of a case of a child twenty-two months old, who suffered for some time
with impaction of a small bone in the esophagus. Less than three months
afterward the patient died with all the symptoms of marasmus, due to
difficult deglutition, and at the autopsy an abscess was seen in the
posterior wall of the pharynx, opposite the 3d cervical vertebra;
extensive caries was also noticed in the bodies of the 2d, 3d, and 4th
cervical vertebrae. Guattani mentions a curious instance in which a man
playing with a chestnut threw it in the air, catching it in his mouth.
The chestnut became lodged in the throat and caused death on the
nineteenth day. At the autopsy it was found that an abscess
communicating with the trachea had been formed in the pharynx and
esophagus.

A peculiarly fatal accident in this connection is that in which a
foreign body in the esophagus ulcerates, and penetrates one of the
neighboring major vessels. Colles mentions a man of fifty-six who,
while eating, perceived a sensation as of a rent in the chest. The pain
was augmented during deglutition, and almost immediately afterward he
commenced to expectorate great quantities of blood. On the following
day he vomited a bone about an inch long and died on the same day. At
the autopsy it was found that there was a rent in the posterior wall of
the esophagus, about 1/2 inch long, and a corresponding wound of the
aorta. There was blood in the pleura, pericardium, stomach, and
intestines. There is one case in which a man of forty-seven suddenly
died, a