[Read before American Surgical Association, Cincinnati, O., June, 1883.]
The frequency of injury to the œsophagus, resulting in obstruction and disability of the tube for the entrance of food into the stomach, gives to this class of accidents, and the conditions arising from them, an importance well worthy the careful consideration of the surgeon. Few who have had the unhappiness to witness the gradual, or more or less rapid closure of this important canal; to note day by day the hunger, the thirst, the restlessness, the wild desire, the appealing calls for help and relief, and then the wan cheek, the anxious eye, the rapidly emaciating frame, all harbingers of a sure and agonizing death, can ever forget the scenes, of which they have been the unwilling witness, nor the cries of the victim—most frequently a child—as the painful echoes of a memory they would gladly efface.
In the discussion