Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1875 — Strange Tastes. [ARTICLE]

Strange Tastes.

The London Medical Record has the following: “The incident of the homme a la fourchette, the man who swallowed a fork in Paris in April last, has inspired Dr. Mignon with the idea of collecting all records of similar cases. He has been able to find details of 168, and it would be difficult to imagine anything more astonishing than the catalogue (given in the Union Medicallc for Nov. 3) of the objects swallowed by either veritable lunatics or what may be termed sane idiots. Among the very indigestible and uncomfortable items catalogued we find fifteen gold medals, hair, rings innumerable, 175 francs, a shoe-buckle, nine inches of a sword-blade, very sharp scissors, eighty pins, a baby’s bottle, the caster of a night-stool, an entire set of dominoes (the size of which, however, is not stated), 100 louis d’or, a flute four inches long, a glass vial, thirty-five knives, a clay pipe, from 1,400 to 1,500 pins, a bar of lead weighing a pound, a whetstone and (in three instances) a table fork. But the most extraordinary of all these cases occurred in the instance of a convict who died at Brest in 1773, and on whose body a necropsy was performed. The stomach was completely displaced, and occupied the left hypochondrium, the lumbar and iliac regions of the one side extending into the pelvis nearly as far as the foramen ovale; it contained fifty-two different objects, weighing altogether one pound and ten ounces. Among them was the part of the hoop of a barrel nineteen inches long and one inch wide. M. Mignon has classified these 163 cases into three categories: 1. Foreign bodies which passed through the whole extent of the digestive canal with scarcely any injurious results. 2. Foreign bodies which have passed through the whole extent of the digestive track with more or less serious results, but ultimate recovery. 3. Foreign bodies which have passed through the whole digestive track, causing serious disturbance and fatal results. 4. Cases in which the foreign body has not been passed. 5. Cases in which operations have been performed. It is a remarkable fact that the cases of death caused by the presence of foreign bodies in the digestive tubes are less numerous than might be expected. Out of the 163 cases we only find ten deaths from this cause. To these must be added two deaths after operation, making altogether twelve, or 7 3-10 per cent. There appears, therefore, to be no great cause for geon to be over-anxious in these cases, but to remember that unless there should be some complications in the general health, or some special indication, it will be as well for him not to interfere, and above all things not to perform gastrotomy, save as a last resource. Of. this last operation M. Mignon relates five cases; among them being those which Dr. Neal, in 1855, and Mr. Bell, in 1859, thought themselves obliged to perform, the one in order to extract a bar of lead ten inches long and weighing' one pound; the other to do the same with a bar of lead nearly twelve inches long and weighing more than nine ounces. In both these cases the symptoms were very serious, pomprising violent pains in the stomach, twitching along the vertebral column, sickness and general prostration. The foreign bodies could not be felt through the abdominal walls, but the surgeons decided upon performing the operation, thinking that the sufferers had no chance of other relief. The success of the operations was fortunately complete.” Pure soft water is the best of all blood purifiers. It dissolves almost every impurity that may find its way into the blood and passes it off through the skin, lungs and kidneys, thus washing out the blood without any irritation in passing through the system and without those chemical changes and deposits which are likelv to arise from the action of drugs. Why then use doubtful, dangerous and often injurious drugs for purifying the blood when pure, simple, safe, pleasant, and far more effectual water may be bad without money add without price ?—Science of Health.