ng-needle. It exhibited motions like those
of a snake, and was quite lively, living five or six days in water. The
case seems quite unaccountable, but there is, of course, a possibility
that the animal had already been in the chamber, or that it was passed
by the bowel. A rectovaginal or vesical fistula could account for the
presence of this worm had it been voided from the bowel; nevertheless
the woman adhered to her statement that she had urinated the worm, and,
as confirmatory evidence, never complained of pain after passing the
animal.

Foreign bodies in the bladder, other than calculi (which will be spoken
of in Chapter XV), generally gain entrance through one of the natural
passages, as a rule being introduced, either in curiosity or for
perverted satisfaction, through the urethra. Morand mentions an
instance in which a long wax taper was introduced into the bladder
through the urethra by a man. At the University Hospital, Philadelphia,
White has extracted, by median cystotomy, a long wax taper which had
been used in masturbation. The cystoscopic examination in this case
was negative, and the man's statements were disbelieved, but the
operation was performed, and the taper was found curled up and covered
by mucus and folds of the bladder. It is not uncommon for needles,
hair-pins, and the like to form nuclei for incrustations. Gross found
three caudal vertebrae of a squirrel in the center of a vesical
calculus taken from the bladder of a man of thirty-five. It was
afterward elicited that the patient had practiced urethral masturbation
with the tail of this animal. Morand relates the history of a man of
sixty-two who introduced a sprig of wheat into his urethra for a
supposed therapeutic purpose. It slipped into the bladder and there
formed the nucleus of a cluster calculus. Dayot reports a similar
formation from the introduction of the stem of a plant. Terrilon
describes the case of a man of fifty-four who introduced a pencil into
his urethra. The body rested fifteen days in this canal, and then
passed into the bladder. On the twenty-eighth day he had a chill, and
during two days made successive attempts to break the pencil. Following
each attempt he had a violent chill and intense evening fever. On the
thirty-third day Terrilon removed the pencil by operation. Symptoms of
perivesical abscess were present, and seventeen days after the
operation, and fifty days after the introduction of the pencil, the
patien