My Child... Swallowed a Pin!

A strange thing it is, this human stomach.

Strange, how much toil it endures: how many and varied are the foods that enter it — foods so often badly cooked, hastily eaten, and not easily digested. And strange, how many foreign bodies it holds, from time to time...

A few weeks ago we read of a workman from whose stomach the surgeon removed a key twelve centimeters long, a steel awl, a rubber spring, and a bicycle bar... When the workman came round from his unconsciousness and the surgeon showed him the list of the findings, the workman answered absently: "I am afraid you did not manage to get everything out!"

The records of medicine are filled with what surgeons extract from time to time from patients' stomachs: coins, pins, needles, toys, spoons, glasses, razor blades, chains, keys, fish, and more besides.

The question that comes to mind is: why do these things, which cannot be chewed, reach the stomach — the stomachs of a good number of people every year?

The first cause: negligence and lack of care. Recently a baker was fined because he baked a loaf inside which a razor blade was found, and on the very same day another man was sentenced because a large nail was found in a cake he had baked.

What people swallow most often are fish bones — and that is natural. As for children, they will swallow, if they can, everything their little hands can reach — which leads to a number of illnesses and troubles, for them and for their families. It is therefore the duty of parents to take every care that nothing be within the child's reach that ought not to be put in the mouth. Among other things, all the toys and objects around them should be so large in size that they cannot enter the mouth, or, if they

do enter it, cannot pass through the throat. As for grown people, what they swallow most are needles, pins, and hairpins, because to make their work easier they so often place them between their lips.

Another of the causes is love of showing off. There are many who wish to win people's admiration by eating pieces of glass or razor blades. And there are certain hysterical cases whose sufferers try to gain the sympathy of family and acquaintances by swallowing something frightening, so as to draw out their pity!

Fortunately for the body's constitution, many swallowed objects find their way through the body and pass out without doing it any harm. But there have been numerous cases in which those objects lost their way and lodged in particular spots, causing an inflammation with whatever consequences may follow. Medical statistics have proved that of every ten cases, nine end without the least harm occurring. The tenth case should be treated by a specialist surgeon — not left to nature, or to the ignorant and the half-ignorant.

But prevention is better than cure. The best method is to avoid swallowing things. One should therefore put in one's mouth only what one can eat and drink, and never place pins, needles, and the like between one's lips — especially since putting them there in that way draws the admiration of those little monkeys, the children, and so leads them to imitate their elders in it. Little ones should not be encouraged to put what they find into their mouths; pins, coins, buttons, and the like should not be set before them; and the pins used in their clothes should be long and large, so that there is nothing to fear from them.

And if it should happen that the child swallows a pin or anything else, do not strike him on the back, or hold him upside down in the hope that the pin will come down that way. That position may cause the pin to shift to a spot more dangerous than the one it was in, and the end will be worse than the beginning. Rather, you must hurry with him to the doctor or, if possible, to the hospital.