When things of this kind are left in the abdomen the risks are not so great now as in pre-antiseptic days, but they cause much discomfort and anxiety as well as suffering: moreover, such an accident entails reopening the wound and occasionally a serious operation for the removal of the missing article, and as a recent decision in a Court of Law fixes the responsibility on the operator, there is always the possibility of an action at law with all its vexations and the liability of being mulcted in damages. The behaviour of foreign bodies left in the abdomen is curious and also interesting from the great length of time which metal instruments will sometimes remain without causing very urgent symptoms, and the tendency they exhibit to penetrate adjacent viscera. Among the early cases Sir Spencer Wells reported one in which a pair of forceps was found in a patient’s bladder who died a month after ovariotomy. Olshausen mentions that a pair of forceps was passed by the rectum nine months after ovariotomy, and Terrillon tells of a pair of pressure forceps which remained eight months in the belly and came out close to the navel. One of the most remarkable instances is recorded by MacLaren, in which a pair of forceps was left in the abdomen in the course of a hysterectomy. Two years later, a swelling formed in the right iliac region; this was explored through an abdominal incision, and the hæmostatic forceps represented in Fig. 26 was found embedded in the omentum; the forceps had ulcerated into the cæcum and the blades were lodged in the vermiform appendix. The patient recovered. In order to illustrate the diminished risks run by patients when the instruments and dabs used in operations are thoroughly sterilized, reference may be made to a case recently reported by J. E. F. Stewart (Australia), in which he removed a pair of pressure forceps which had remained in the abdomen for ten years and a half. The patient, who had been more or less an invalid since the primary operation, had suffered from attacks of acute pain, constipation alternating with diarrhœa, and pains in the lower limbs. The instrument, which measured 5 inches long and 2-1/2 across the handles, was lying point downwards in the pelvis, and the ring handles could be felt through the belly-wall before the operation: it had made its way into the small intestine. [Illustration: FIG. 26. A PAIR OF PRESSURE FORCEPS: this instrument had remained in the abdomen two years after hysterectomy. The forceps had ulcerated into the cæcum and the blades had lodged in the vermiform appendix. (_After MacLaren._)]