Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1875 — A Peculiar Case. [ARTICLE]

A Peculiar Case.

One of the most extraordinary medical cases on record is that of Jerry Lunt, a young man from Fullerton, Whitesides County, now under treatment at the Mercy Hospital. Lunt, who is now twenty-two years of age, says that even in boyhood' he experienced difficulty in swallowing, which gradually increased until a few weeks since; when it became impossible for him to swallow even water or any other Hquid, and it was found also impossible to administer, food through a stomach tube, or to even insert a probe Since then he has subsisted wholly on injections of fluid nutriment. Since his removal to the Mercy Hospital, some days

since, the injections have consisted of grated oysters, milk, egg nogg and pan creatic emulsion of cod liver oil. Thus far, though his system' is somewhat emaciated, it appears to absorb sufficient nutriment to sustain life, though as yet the treatment is. regarded as experimental, and he suffers comparatively little from hunger or tfiirst. The case is one of the class known as stricture of the gullet or esophagus, at the extremity of the canal leading from the mouth to the stomach; but the cases in which the stricture was such as to absolutely prevent swallowing have been extremely rare, and the result of Lunt’s care is awaited with considerable interest by the medical fraternity. What caused the stricture in this case appears enveloped in mystery. Ths theory is that, by some acrid substance swallowed, the lining of the esophagus was eaten away and a cicatrix, or scar,was formed, which since that time has gradually contracted until the passage into the stomach is entirely closed. Whether he can live in this condition, and whether by a surgical operation it will be possible to relieve him, the medical attendants at the hospital are not now prepared 'to state.— Chicago Inter-Ocean, Dec. 20.