Key Object Page

A Foreign Body

This glass tube comes from a man who was operated on for a perforated duodenal ulcer in the early twentieth century. After the surgery, a drain consisting of a glass tube with a rubber attachment was used to remove any exudate – the blood, serum, lymph and other fluids that accumulate in a wound after a surgical procedure. He returned home seven weeks later, and found he had a recurrent pain in the right side of the perinaeum that made him unable to ride in a car or bus, and occasionally he passed blood in his faeces. Three and a half years later he passed the glass tube that had been used to drain the wound in his stool, and following this had no further trouble. The tube is six and a half inches long, and one end is broken and sharp.