40 PROPERTIES OF MATTER 



If it possessed any permanent power of solidity 

 or of fluidity the one could not, by the or- 



voided them all. Six years after, being at Boston in America, 

 his fame for swallowing knives having spread, he was induced 

 one night, to swallow six, and the next day, while in a state 

 of inebriation, to swallow eight more ; and after very violent 

 efforts in his stomach and bowels, the whole of them were 

 voided. Soon after he arrived in this country, and while at 

 Portsmouth, in December 1 805, he got drunk, and swallowed 

 Jive knives, and on the sixth, nine more. The persons pre- 

 sent, asserted that he had swallowed four others ; but of this 

 he was not conscious. It appears, therefore, that in the 

 whole, he had swallowed at different periods, THIRTY-SIX 

 knives. The disease which these extraneous bodies produced, 

 can be better conceived than described. Sufferings, the most 

 acute, ended in a death, the most wretched. On opening his 

 body, there were found in his stomach, a large coat button, 

 with an anchor engraven on it, two silver ornaments, the 

 back of a silver knife, supposed to have belonged to a lady's 

 fruit-knife, and thirteen blades, belonging to some of the 

 larger knives which he had swallowed. They were tolerably 

 perfect, as to figure, although much corroded ; so much so, 

 that the blades were reduced to very thin plates ; beside 

 which, there were a great number of smaller pieces, which, 

 apparently, had been separated from the blades. A large 

 piece of the back-spring of a knife, about four inches in 

 length, and very sharp at one end, was found passing through 

 the coloa into the abdomen: five others, in different parts of 

 the larger intestines, the coats of which they had pierced and 

 lacerated, and remained suspended in them, in different direc- 

 tions. As this unhappy man, at the time of his death, was 

 under the immediate care of Dr. CURRY, of GUY'S HOSPI- 

 TAL, it is to be hoped, that he will publish a detail of all the 

 particulars, more especially* as he is so eminently qualified to 

 do justice to the case. 





