trachea and esophagus with recoveries. Van Swieten and Hiester
mention cases in which part of the trachea was carried away by a ball,
with recovery. Monro, Tulpius, Bartholinus, and Pare report severance
of the trachea with the absence of oral breathing, in which the divided
portions were sutured, with successful results. In his "Theatro
Naturae," Bodinus says that William, Prince of Orange, lost the sense
of taste after receiving a wound of the larynx; according to an old
authority, a French soldier became mute after a similar accident.
Davies-Colley mentions a boy of eighteen who fell on a stick about the
thickness of the index finger, transfixing his neck from right to left;
he walked to a doctor's house, 250 yards away, with the stick in situ.
In about two weeks he was discharged completely well. During treatment
he had no hemorrhage of any importance, and his voice was not affected,
but for a while he had slight dysphagia.

Barker gives a full account of a barber who was admitted to a hospital
two and a half hours after cutting his throat. He had a deep wound
running transversely across the neck, from one angle of the jaw to the
other, cutting open the floor of the mouth and extending from the inner
border of the sternocleido-mastoid to the other, leaving the large
vessels of the neck untouched. The razor had passed through the
glosso-epiglottidean fold, a tip of the epiglottis, and through the
pharynx down to the spinal column. There was little hemorrhage, but the
man could neither swallow nor speak. The wound was sutured, tracheotomy
done, and the head kept fixed on the chest by a copper splint. He was
ingeniously fed by esophageal tubes and rectal enemata; in three weeks
speech and deglutition were restored. Shortly afterward the esophageal
tube was removed and recovery was virtually complete. Little mentions
an extraordinary case of a woman of thirty-six who was discharged from
Garland's asylum, where she had been an inmate for three months. This
unfortunate woman had attempted suicide by self-decapitation from
behind forward. She was found, knife in hand, with a huge wound in the
back of the neck and her head bobbing about in a ghastly manner. The
incision had severed the skin, subcutaneous tissues and muscles, the
ligaments and bone, opening the spinal canal, but not cutting the cord.
The instrument used to effect this major injury was a blunt
potato-peeling knife. Despite this terrible wound the patient liv