REPORTS OF CASES. 
453 
CHOKE IN A DOG—(ESOPHAGOTOMY—REMOVAL OF A LARGE 
PIECE OF BONE. 
. . 
By E. B. Ackerman, D.Y.S., House Surgeon. 
I The patient was a little Scotch terrier pup, about six months 
old. One day after the dog- had been picking in some bones 
the owner noticed a large swelling under the neck, which was 
painful and sometimes caused the dog to gag ; when offered 
food he refused all except a very little milk and water. 
The dog was more or less lively at times, and when owner 
touched dog’s neck, it would make the dog act sick again for 
awhile. This went on for about a week, when the owner 
took the dog to his family physician, who diagnosed a case of 
choke from a bone in the oesophagus, and advised the owner 
to bring the dog to us. 
The dog was brought here on October 5th, 1891 ; he had 
a large swelling on the underside of his neck, situated in the 
middle of the cervical portion of the oesophagus ; you could 
feel a foreign body—apparently a large piece of bone. This 
swelling was very painful to the touch. 
We cut down on it so we could see a portion of it, then we 
took hold of it with our forceps, and extracted it. This took 
considerable force, as the muscular coat was so constricted 
around it or it was so firmly imbedded in the oesophagus. 
The bone measured four inches in circumference, seven- 
eighths inch thick, one and three-eighths inch long, one and 
three-eighths inch wide, and weighed eighty-six grains. It 
was a piece of the large trochanter of the femur of some small 
animal. 
After extracting the bone the dog regurgitated some of 
the contents of his stomach ; this he did for a day or two in 
small quantities. 
We kept the wound perfectly clean with antiseptic wash¬ 
ings, and two days after he stopped discharging his ingesta 
from the opening and the wound was granulating nicely ; by 
the third day the swelling had subsided almost entirely and 
the granulations healthy. 
