The patient was a man of thirty-six who received a blow in the abdomen during a fight in a public house on June 6, 1879.

At the hospital his condition was diagnosed and treated expectantly, but he recovered perfectly and left the hospital July 10, 1879.

He was readmitted on August 4, 1886, over seven years later, with symptoms of rupture of the bladder, and died on the 6th.

The postmortem showed a cicatrix of the bladder which had given way and caused the patient's death.
Rupture of the bladder is only likely to happen when the organ is distended, as when empty it sinks behind the pubic arch and is thus protected from external injury.

The rupture usually occurs on the posterior wall, involving the peritoneal coat and allowing extravasation of urine into the peritoneal cavity, a condition that is almost inevitably fatal unless an operation is performed.