WOUNDS OF THE HEART.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3259, 12 December 1881, Page 4

WOUNDS OF THE HEART.

It is generally supposed that wounds of the hearts kill immediately, but a correspondent has sent to us a stag's heart with the left auricle practically annihilated and the upper half of the left ventricle torn completely through by a bullet, so that three fingers can be readily passed through the wound into the cavity. Notwithstanding the extent of the injury, " the stag ran about sixty yards, the first ten yards up hill." The fact is that wounds of the heart are but seldom immediately fatal, if ever so. We know of no case of absolutely instantaneous death from a wound of the heart, in any part or however extensive. The experience in the battle-field corresponds with that of the sportsman, as given in tho letter of our correspondent, who " never saw a deer shot through the heart that did not run some distance." Wounds of the apex kill comparatively slowly, in from one hour upwards; and in one case mentioned by John Bell, in which the apex was completely severed from the rest of the organ by a sword-cut, the man lived twelve hours. Indeed, out of twenty-nine collected cases of injury to the heart, only two were fatal within forty-eight hours, and in the others death resulted in periods varying from four to twenty-eight days. Keeovery may take place even when the wound is extensive, for a wound has been found embedded in the substance of the heart after .a lapse of six years from the date of the injury, the patient having died from a disease of another organ in no way connected with the lesion. Some little time elapses before the blood wholly escapes from or fails to enter the cavities, and the walls continue to contract and propel some of it into the vessels for a much longer period than is usually thought to be the case.—Lancet.