rk, his digestion and appetite
being normal. Some months later a small fold or doubling of the
stomachal coats slightly protruded until the whole aperture was filled,
so as to supersede the necessity of a compress, the protruding coats
acting as a valve when the stomach was filled. This valvular protrusion
was easily depressed by the finger. St. Martin suffered little pain
except from the depression of the skin. He took his food and drink like
any healthy person, and for eleven years remained under Dr. Beaumont's
own care in the Doctor's house as a servant. During this time were
performed the experiments on digestion which are so well known. St.
Martin was at all times willing to lend himself in the interest of
physiologic science. In August, 1879, The Detroit Lancet contains
advices that St. Martin was living at that time at St. Thomas, Joliette
County, Province of Quebec, Canada. At the age of seventy-nine he was
comparatively strong and well, and had always been a hard worker. At
this time the opening in the stomach was nearly an inch in diameter,
and in spite of its persistence his digestion had never failed him.

Spizharny relates a remarkable case of gastric fistula in the loin, and
collects 61 cases of gastric fistula, none of which opened in the loin.
The patient was a girl of eighteen, who had previously had
perityphlitis, followed by abscesses about the navel and lumbar region.
Two fistulae were found in the right loin, and were laid open into one
canal, which, after partial resection of the 12th rib, was dilated and
traced inward and upward, and found to be in connection with the
stomach. Food was frequently found on the dressings, but with the
careful use of tampons a cure was effected.

In the olden times wounds of the stomach were not always fatal. The
celebrated anatomist, Fallopius, successfully treated two cases in
which the stomach was penetrated so that food passed through the wound.
Jacobus Orthaeus tells us that in the city of Fuldana there was a
soldier who received a wound of the stomach, through which food passed
immediately after being swallowed; he adds that two judicious surgeons
stitched the edges of the wound to the integuments, thereby effecting a
cure. There is another old record of a gastric fistula through which
some aliment passed during the period of eleven years.

Archer tells of a man who was stabbed by a negro, the knife entering
the cartilages of the 4th rib on the right side, a