| Show so AM owr your docto ar says 0 0 the following is one of a series of articles written by members of the utah stale state medical association and published in cooperation with your local newspaper these articles are scheduled to appear every other week throughout the year in an e effort ol 01 1 to att better acquaint vou won with problems ems of health and designed to improve the well being of the people of utah FOREIGN BODIES among the wise crackers the ex foreign body has been applied to curvaceous actresses from across the ocean but that is another story A foreign body in the practice of medicine is any piece of material lodged in a person s anatomy which the good lord did not originally rigi nally but there A bullet or piece of shrapnel Arap hrap nel a coin in a stomach a silver sliver or needle beneath the skin these ar the foreign bodies that concern the doctor and the patient also especially if you happen to be the patient there are certain facts about pins coins coms bullets and such in this connection about which the public might well be en lightened consider for instance bullets it may be safely estimated that at least one million men in this courtry coultry alone carry from one to one hundred fragments of metal in their flesh as war souvenirs re moval boval of these is impractical if not impossible and would do no good cod so the good surgeon says let sleeping slugs h he e bess uess and lets it go at that nev nevertheless e r t folks cling to the medieval notion that when one is shot the doctor comes running with probes and forceps to remove the bullet the reader may refer to Gun smoke or any other w estem stern radio thriller for verification but this moe mone seems quite useless when one reflects that after all the hole will still t there and somewhat larger and more blood will be lost the lead has done its dirty work and come to rest in the great majority of cases it will do no more harm the wound must be treated for anfee tion and hemorrhage and the bul let will sleep A baby will put into his mouth almost anything he can reach pro vided it fits corns coins keys parts of toys and pins are all tried out the largest co i in a stomach ob served hereabout was a fifty cent piece it had to be removed cally because the stomach couldn coulden t pass it this was an exceptional case ase the boy had had cash on hand for 6 weeks the writer ob served a one year old who had chewed up a clothes pm pin spat out the wood and swallowed the spring closed safety pins pass through uneventfully open safety pins are bad very bad they creep like a ox tail tall and eventually eventual lv puncture victure the intestinal wall little red d salted peanuts have lame caused many a lung abscess when lowed down the wrong throat bv a playing youngster they an and swell and can cant t be coughed up A needle under the skin wil travel and hurt with the help r a fluoroscope it can be removed ir a very few minutes without lip fluoroscope it is like proverbial leedle needle in the haystack so far as location is concerned the following statements mav be ie offered in summing up the for eign body situation if the baby swallows a penny penn 7 its position should be determined bv x ray my if it has passed the esoph agus you may rest easy little safety pins are cute but dangerous they should be completely out cawed in the nursery that is un less one relishes the idea of a fe few sleepless nights dont buy the kids salted peanuts give them loll 1011 lolly y pops instead needles drop ped on a carpet are liable to stick straight up presently someone gets a sore foot or knee and the have to be dug out if you have a bullet or fragment of shrapnel and it bouncing around inside imide you better leave it alone you may feel it when th weather changes but after all what s a bullet or two nowadays |
