h ribs, 2
1/4 inches from the nipple. A line drawn from the wound of entrance to
that of exit would pass exactly through the right ventricle. After
receiving the wound the man walked about twenty steps, and then,
feeling very weak from profuse hemorrhage from the front of the wound,
he sat down. With little or no treatment the wound closed and steady
improvement set in; the patient was discharged in three weeks. As the
man was still living at last reports, the exact amount of damage done
in the track of the bullet is not known, although Mastin's supposition
is that the heart was penetrated.

Mellichamp speaks of a gunshot wound of the heart with recovery, and
Ford records an instance in which a wound of the heart by a buckshot
was followed by recovery. O'Connor reports a case under his observation
in which a pistol-ball passed through three of the four cavities of the
heart and lodged in the root of the right lung. The patient, a boy of
fifteen, died of the effects of cardiac disease three years and two
months later. Bell mentions a case in which, six years after the
receipt of a gunshot wound of the chest, a ball was found in the right
ventricle. Christison speaks of an instance in which a bullet was found
in the heart of a soldier in Bermuda, with no apparent signs of an
opening to account for its entrance. There is a case on record of a boy
of fourteen who was shot in the right shoulder, the bullet entering
through the right upper border of the trapezius, two inches from the
acromion process. Those who examined him supposed the ball was lodged
near the sternal end of the clavicle, four or five inches from where it
entered. In about six weeks the boy was at his labors. Five years later
he was attacked with severe pneumonia and then first noticed tumultuous
action of the heart which continued to increase after his recovery.
Afterward the pulsation could be heard ten or 12 feet away. He died of
another attack of pneumonia fifteen years later and the heart was found
to be two or three times its natural size, soft and flabby, and, on
opening the right ventricle, a bullet was discovered embedded in its
walls. There was no scar of entrance discernible, though the
pericardium was adherent. Biffi of Milan describes the case of a
lunatic who died in consequence of gangrene of the tongue from a bite
in a paroxysm of mania. At the necropsy a needle, six cm. in length,
was found transfixing the heart, with which the relatives of