nd penetrating the
stomach to the extent of two inches at a point about two inches below
the xiphoid cartilage. The stomachal contents, consisting of bacon,
cabbage, and cider, were evacuated. Shortly after the reception of the
injury, an old soldier sewed up the wound with an awl, needle, and
wax-thread; Archer did not see the patient until forty-eight hours
afterward, at which time he cleansed and dressed the wound. After a
somewhat protracted illness the patient recovered, notwithstanding the
extent of injury and the primitive mode of treatment.

Travers mentions the case of a woman of fifty-three who, with suicidal
intent, divided her abdominal parietes below the navel with a razor,
wounding the stomach in two places. Through the wound protruded the
greater part of the larger curvature of the stomach; the arch of the
colon and the entire greater omentum were both strangulated. A small
portion of the coats of the stomach, including the wound, was nipped
up, a silk ligature tied about it, and the entrails replaced. Two
months afterward the patient had quite recovered, though the ligature
of the stomach had not been seen in the stool. Clements mentions a
robust German of twenty-two who was stabbed in the abdomen with a dirk,
producing an incised wound of the stomach. The patient recovered and
was returned to duty the following month.

There are many cases on record in which injury of the stomach has been
due to some mistake or accident in the juggling process of
knife-swallowing or sword-swallowing. The records of injuries of this
nature extend back many hundred years, and even in the earlier days the
delicate operation of gastrotomy, sometimes with a successful issue,
was performed upon persons who had swallowed knives. Gross mentions
that in 1502 Florian Mathias of Bradenberg removed a knife nine inches
long from the stomach of a man of thirty-six, followed by a successful
recovery. Glandorp, from whom, possibly, Gross derived his information,
relates this memorable case as being under the direction of Florianus
Matthaesius of Bradenburg. The patient, a native of Prague, had
swallowed a knife eight or nine inches long, which lay pointing at the
superior portion of the stomach. After it had been lodged in this
position for seven weeks and two days gastrotomy was performed, and the
knife extracted; the patient recovered. In 1613 Crollius reports the
case of a Bohemian peasant who had concealed a knife in his mouth,
t