Resistance of Children to Injuries

Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
by George M. Gould, M.D., Walter L. Pyle, M.D.

(Page 19 of 41)

It is a remarkable fact that young children, whose bones, cartilages, and tissues are remarkably elastic, are sometimes able to sustain the passage over their bodies of vehicles of great weight without apparent injury. There is a record early in this century of a child of five who was run over across the epigastrium by a heavy two-wheeled cart, but recovered without any bad symptoms. The treatment in this case is quite interesting, and was as follows: venesection to faintness, castor oil in infusion of senna until there was a free evacuation of the bowels, 12 leeches to the abdomen and spine, and a saline mixture every two hours! Such depleting therapeutics would in themselves seem almost sufficient to provoke a fatal issue, and were given in good faith as the means of effecting a recovery in such a case. In a similar instances a wagon weighing 1200 pounds passed over a child of five, with no apparent injury other than a bruise near the ear made by the wheel.

Infant-vitality is sometimes quite remarkable, a newly-born child sometimes surviving extreme exposure and major injuries. There was a remarkable instance of this kind brought to light in the Mullings vs. Mullings divorce-case, recorded in The Lancet. It appeared that Mrs. Mullings, a few hours after her confinement at Torquay, packed her newly-born infant boy in a portmanteau, and started for London. She had telegraphed Dr. J. S. Tulloch to meet her at Paddington, where he found his patient apparently in good condition, and not weak, as he expected in a woman shortly to be confined. On the way to her apartments, which had been provided by Dr. Tulloch, Mrs. Mullings remarked to the Doctor that she had already borne her child. Dr. Tulloch was greatly surprised, and immediately inquired what she had done with the baby. She replied that it was in a box on top of the cab. When the box was opened the child was found alive. The Lancet comments on the remarkable fact that, shortly after confinement, a woman can travel six or seven hours in a railroad train, and her newly-born babe conveyed the same distance in a portmanteau, without apparent injury, and without attracting attention.

Booth reports a remarkable case of vitality of a newly-born child which came under his observation in October, 1894. An illegitimate child, abandoned by its mother, was left at the bottom of a cesspool vault; she claimed that ten hours before Booth's visit it had been accidentally dropped during an attempt to micturate. The infant lived despite the following facts: Its delivery from an ignorant, inexperienced, unattended negress; its cord not tied; its fall of 12 feet down the pit; its ten hours' exposure in the cesspool; its smothering by foul air, also by a heavy covering of rags, paper, and straw; its pounding by three bricks which fell in directly from eight feet above (some loose bricks were accidentally dislodged from the sides of the vault, in the maneuvers to extricate the infant); its lowered temperature previous to the application of hot bottles, blankets, and the administration of cardiac stimulants. Booth adds that the morning after its discovery the child appeared perfectly well, and some two months afterward was brought into court as evidence in the case. A remarkable case of infant vitality is given on page 117.

Operations in the Young and Old. It might be of interest to mention that such a major operation as ovariotomy has been successfully performed in an infant. In a paper on infant ovariotomy d several instances of this nature are mentioned. Roemer successfully performed ovariotomy on a child one year and eight months old; Swartz, on a child of four; Barker, on a child of four; Knowsley Thornton, on a child of seven, and Spencer Wells Cupples, and Chenoweth, on children of eight. Rein performed ovariotomy on a girl of six, suffering from a multilocular cyst of the left ovary. He expresses his belief that childhood and infancy are favorable to laparotomy.

Kidd removed a dermoid from a child of two years and eleven months; Hooks performed the same operation on a child of thirty months. Chiene extirpated an ovary from a child of three; Neville duplicated this operation in a child one month younger; and Alcock performed ovariotomy on a child of three.

Successful ovariotomies are infrequent in the extremely aged. Bennett mentions an instance in a woman of seventy-five, and Davies records a similar instance. Borsini and Terrier cite instances of successful ovariotomy in patients of seventy-seven. Carmichael performed the operation at seventy-four. Owens mentions it at eighty; and Homans at eighty-two years and four months. Dewees records a successful case of ovariotomy in a woman over sixty-seven; McNutt reports a successful instance in a patient of sixty-seven years and six months; the tumor weighed 60 pounds, and there were extensive adhesions. Maury removed a monocystic ovarian tumor from a woman of seventy-four, his patient recovering. Pippingskold mentions an ovariotomy at eighty. Terrier describes double ovariotomy for fibromata in a woman of seventy-seven. Aron speaks of an operation for pilous dermoid of the ovary in a woman of seventy-five. Shepherd reports a case of recurrent proliferous cyst in a woman of sixty-three, on whom successful ovariotomy was performed twice within nine months. Wells mentions an ovarian cyst in a woman of sixty-five, from which 72 pints of fluid were removed.

Hawkins describes the case of a musician, M. Rochard, who at the age of one hundred and seven was successfully operated on for strangulated hernia of upward of thirty hours' duration. The wound healed by first intention, and the man was well in two weeks. Fowler operated successfully for strangulated umbilical hernia on a patient of sixty-eight.

Repeated Operations. Franzolini speaks of a woman of fifty on whom he performed six celiotomies between June, 1879, and April, 1887. The first operation was for fibrocystic disease of the uterus. Since the last operation the woman had had remarkably good health, and there was every indication that well-merited recovery had been effected. The Ephemerides contains an account of a case in which cystotomy was repeated four times, and there is another record of this operation having been done five times on a man. Instances of repeated Cesarean section are mentioned on page 130.

Before leaving this subject, we mention a marvelous operation performed by Billroth on a married woman of twenty-nine, after her sixth pregnancy. This noted operator performed, synchronously, double ovariotomy and resections of portions of the bladder and ileum, for a large medullary carcinomatous growth of the ovary, with surrounding involvement. Menstruation returned three months after the operation, and in fifteen months the patient was in good health in every way, with no apparent danger of recurrence of the disease.