Word: esophagus
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Abdominal Mouth. One day when Tom was nine years old his father brought home some hot chowder in a beer bucket. Thinking it was beer, Tom took a swig, burned his esophagus so badly that the doctors could not keep it open as it healed. So for 47 years Tom has fed himself through an opening surgeons made in his abdominal wall. He chews his food, then spits it into a funnel attached to a rubber tube which runs through the opening to his stomach. A sensitive, self-respecting little man, with a peppery Irish temper, Tom has kept...
...spinners in Britain, who are constantly exposed to the carcinogenic mineral oil used in lubricating the spindles, may develop "mule spinners' cancer" of the scrotum. Obviously, said Dr. Cramer, occupational cancer is a "preventable disease." Social Cancers, an expression coined by Dr. Cramer, which include cancers of the esophagus, stomach, upper digestive tract -all especially common in the lower economic groups. One reason for this prevalence, said the doctor, is the "banal" fact of widespread tooth decay, or "in plain English, a dirty mouth." Improper chewing and constant swallowing of infected matter produce dangerous physical and chemical irritation...
...Bohemian doctor brought one of his countrymen to Dr. Carlson's laboratory. Fred Vlcek, now known to medical school freshmen as "Mr. V.," was a barber who as a child had accidentally swallowed strong caustic soda solution. The soda burned his esophagus, and the scar tissue which formed there permanently closed it, so that no food could pass to his stomach. Surgeons had made a neat little hole in his stomach wall, inserted a rubber tube. Mr. V.'s method of eating was necessarily messy: he would first chew his food to enjoy the flavor, then spit...
...Steiner procured over 20 pounds of livers from persons who had died from cancer of the stomach, lung, esophagus, pancreas, rectum. All the livers were perfectly normal. He ground them, extracted the fat, dried the residue to "a flaky brown material with a disagreeable odor...
...Waddie's most famous puzzling cases a man had been killed during a shooting fray, but the nearest bullet was found on the floor four feet from the corpse. Some unknown missile had penetrated the breastbone and windpipe, grazed the esophagus, pierced the large artery (aorta) leading from the heart. Result: "massive, bursting hemorrhages of every blood vessel [in the chest], a great gush of blood from the mouth." Waddie was sure the bullet had done the damage, but attorneys for the suspect in the case insisted that the victim must have been stabbed with a dagger by someone...