At the age of seventy-nine he was comparatively strong and well, and had always been a hard worker.

At this time the opening in the stomach was nearly an inch in diameter, and in spite of its persistence his digestion had never failed him.
Spizharny relates a remarkable case of gastric fistula in the loin, and collects 61 cases of gastric fistula, none of which opened in the loin.
The patient was a girl of eighteen, who had previously had perityphlitis, followed by abscesses about the navel and lumbar region.
Two fistulae were found in the right loin, and were laid open into one canal, which, after partial resection of the 12th rib, was dilated and traced inward and upward, and found to be in connection with the stomach.

Food was frequently found on the dressings, but with the careful use of tampons a cure was effected.
In the olden times wounds of the stomach were not always fatal.

The celebrated anatomist, Fallopius, successfully treated two cases in which the stomach was penetrated so that food passed through the wound.
Jacobus Orthaeus tells us that in the city of Fuldana there was a soldier who received a wound of the stomach, through which food passed immediately after being swallowed; he adds that two judicious surgeons stitched the edges of the wound to the integuments, thereby effecting a cure.

There is another old record of a gastric fistula through which some aliment passed during the period of eleven years.
Archer tells of a man who was stabbed by a negro, the knife entering the cartilages of the 4th rib on the right side, and penetrating the stomach to the extent of two inches at a point about two inches below the xiphoid cartilage.