Incision of the Abdomen Successfully Treated

Abstract

The circumstance took place in the afternoon, in the presence of the young man's father and the captain of the vessel on hoard of which he had been employed the season previous. He had been lying on the floor, on his back, for more than half an hour, in a convulsive fit. Ou his return to consciousness, he observed that two vessels, one a hermaphrodite brig, the other a topsail schooner, were passing hy a ledge of rocks in the vicinity, but so situated that a long range of buildings intervened between him and the objects designated. The persons present were incredulous at first ; but on being persuaded to look out of the window opposite to the nearest visible point to the ledge, saw, after a reasonable time (occupied in passing by the intervening houses), the two vessels untler the same sail, and in the same relative position to each other, which he had described, the brig being to windward.In the minds of most persons, the easiest way of accounting for such an incident would be to disbelieve it altogether, and perhaps to consider the whole story but a second edition of that of the Cape Ann sea serpent. But those acquainted with the facts attending, and with the character of ihe individuals on whose authority the statement is made, will seek a different explanation. A careful examination of the room which he was in, as well as the position in which he was lying at the time, has led me to infer that the images of the vessels were reflected from a cloud visible to him through an opposite window, on which they were portrayed too feebly to be perceptible to ordinary vision, but distinct to an eye possessed of such intense sensibility to light as his evidenced at those periods. If this explanation is not adopted, we may suppose either that a long row of buildings is not perfectly opaque, or that light does not travel in straight lines, or, finally, refer it, along with other unfinished business, to animal magnetism. a healthy boy, six years of age, received a wound in his abdomen from a scythe with which another boy was mowing. The point of the instrument entered the abdomen upon the left sitie, a little below, and three inches from, the umbilicus, and passed in four inches, as indicated by the blood upon the scythe, making a wound two inches in length, through which a greater part of his intestines passed. The accident occurred at six, P. M., and two hours afterwards I found him lying on a bed covered with blood, rolling from one side to the other, and his intestines trailing after him. The countenance pallid ; vomiting occasionally ; surface cold; pulse frequent,and scarcely perceptible at the wrist. The patient being laid on a table, and coagula of blood being removed from folds of the intestines, and pressed out of the cavity of the abdomen through the wound, an attempt was made to return the bowels into the abdominal cavity. But on account of the large volume of flatus and fasces which were in the intestines, The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal as published by The New England Journal of Medicine. Downloaded fr...