This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
A woman suffering from melancholia associated with menopause swallowed thirteen foreign bodies with the intention of committing suicide.
She was brought to an institution in New York because she was losing weight in the institution in which she had been previously kept; she would not take nourishment. When she arrived in New York we found that she could not take nourishment. A roentgenogram showed foreign bodies in the esophagus and an equally large collection in the stomach and in the intestines. The patient was too restless to be examined by esophagoscope without a general anesthetic.
All these foreign bodies, with the exception of a large piece of crockery, were located above the point where the arch of the aorta crosses the esophagus. The first one to be reached was the large screw; then the rest were removed. The difficulty in the case was the necessity of frequently removing and reintroducing