Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice, and the Physiology of Digestion

The subject upon which the experiments of the latter were performed, Avas a young man, of a good constitution, robust and healthy, who, on the Gth of June, 1822, he being then eighteen years of age, was accidentally wounded by the discharge of a musket loaded with buck-shot. The load entered his body posteriorly, and in an oblique direction, forwards and inwards, literally blowing off a portion of the integuments and muscles ofihe size of a man's hand, fracturing and carrying away the anterior half of the sixth rib ; fracturing the fifth ; lacerating the lower portion of the left lobe of the lungs and the diaphragm, and perforating the stomach. On examination, twenty-five or thirty minutes after the accident, a portion of the lung, as large as a turkey's egg, was found protruding through the exterior wound, lacerated and burnt, and immediately below this, was " another protrusion, which, on further examination, proved to he a portion of the stomach, lacerated through all its coats, and pouring out the food " that