Note 173 — Chapter I

Mr. W. M. Fletcher, M.B., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, has kindly furnished me with his opinion on this point. He says: “A sword transfixing the living body and at the same time driven through the cavity of the heart would cause violent hæmorrhage from one or other of the external wounds, except only under a set of circumstances which could be present only by the rarest chance; the hæmorrhage, that is to say, could be restrained only by an accidental block produced not only at one but at two points on either side of the heart cavity, where the torn tissues might happen so to fit outwards upon and closely against the undisturbed sword as to form a kind of valve. Such an accidental valve formation, occurring at two separate points on each side of the pent-up blood, is improbable enough, but could not be imagined as a prevention of hæmorrhage if the sword were bent, twisted, or withdrawn after the infliction of the wound.”