tooth-plate which was swallowed and passed
forty-two hours later. Billroth mentions an instance of gastrotomy for
the removal of swallowed artificial teeth, with recovery; and another
case in which a successful esophagotomy was performed. Gardiner
mentions a woman of thirty-three who swallowed two false teeth while
supping soup. A sharp angle of the broken plate had caught in a fold of
the cardiac end of the stomach and had caused violent hematemesis.
Death occurred seventeen hours after the first urgent symptoms.

In the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London there is an
intestinal concretion weighing 470 grains, which was passed by a woman
of seventy who had suffered from constipation for many years. Sixteen
years before the concretion was passed she was known to have swallowed
a tooth. At one side of the concretion a piece had been broken off
exposing an incisor tooth which represented the nucleus of the
formation. Manasse recently reported the case of a man of forty-four
whose stomach contained a stone weighing 75 grams. He was a joiner and,
it was supposed, habitually drank some alcoholic solution of shellac
used in his trade. Quite likely the shellac had been precipitated in
the stomach and gave rise to the calculus.

Berwick mentions a child of eight months who was playing with a
detached organ-handle, and put it in its mouth. Seeing this the mother
attempted to secure the handle, but it was pushed into the esophagus. A
physician was called, but nothing was done, and the patient seemed to
suffer little inconvenience. Three days later the handle was expelled
from the anus. Teakle reports the successful passage through the
alimentary canal of the handle of a music-box. Hashimoto,
Surgeon-General of the Imperial Japanese Army, tells of a woman of
forty-nine who was in the habit of inducing vomiting by irritating her
fauces and pharynx with a Japanese toothbrush--a wooden instrument six
or seven inches long with bristles at one end. In May, 1872, she
accidentally swallowed this brush. Many minor symptoms developed, and
in eleven months there appeared in the epigastric region a fluctuating
swelling, which finally burst, and from it extended the end of the
brush. After vainly attempting to extract the brush the attending
physician contented himself with cutting off the projecting portion.
The opening subsequently healed; and not until thirteen years later did
the pain and swelling return. On admission to th