The patient died one month after of another cause, and at the postmortem examination the aorta was shown to have been opened; the wound in its walls was covered with a spheric, indurated coagulum.

No attempt at union had been made.
Zillner observed a penetrating wound of the aorta after which the patient lived sixteen days, finally dying of pericarditis.

Zillner attributed this circumstance to the small size of the wound, atheroma and degeneration of the aorta and slight retraction of the inner coat, together with a possible plugging of the pericardial opening.

In 1880 Chiari said that while dissecting the body of a man who died of phthisis, he found a false aneurysm of the ascending aorta with a transverse rupture of the vessel by the side of it, which had completely cicatrized.

Hill reports the case of a soldier who was stabbed with a bowie-knife nine inches long and three inches wide.