Unextracted balls lead to consequences varying according to the site of lodgment and state of constitution of the patient. If the ball have become fixed in the body of a muscle, or in its cellular connections, adhesive inflammation may be established around it, and in time a dense sac be thus formed, in which the ball may remain without causing any, or but very slight, inconvenience. M. Baudens asserts that a cellular envelope is of very early formation around balls lodged in muscular tissues. Although thus encysted, a ball may press upon nerves, and give rise to pain and much uneasiness, or may be so situated as to embarrass the person in certain movements of the body. Foreign bodies not unfrequently change the position of their first lodgment, under the effect of gravitation or the impulse of muscular actions. The following instance, which occurred to Staff–Surgeon Dr. Daniell, illustrates the distance to which a lodged ball may travel before finding its exit: In the disastrous affair of Malageah, on the west coast of Africa, fought in May, 1855, between detachments of the West India regiments and the Moriah chiefs, a man was wounded just below the spine of the scapula by a shot fired down from an elevation. The aperture was small, no ball could be traced, and the wound healed up rapidly. Six months afterward the man attended hospital, complaining of inability to march and pain about one of his ankles. A red, painful swelling and abscess formed over the inner malleolus, disease of bone was suspected, when examination led to the discovery of a small iron ball, of irregular shape, which was removed. No pain or irritation had existed between the shoulder and the foot. When lodged in the lower extremities, balls sometimes form for themselves canal–shaped cysts, along which they can be moved freely on pressure. When, however, the health or other circumstances of the patient are not favorable, the lodgment of a ball with a smooth surface, like missiles of a more angular and irregular shape, may excite inflammation and constitutional disturbance of a very troublesome kind, and keep up a profuse suppurating discharge along the track of the wound, or perhaps lead to abscesses burrowing in other directions. Balls have been known to lodge in bones, without their positions having been suspected or inconvenience excited by their presence. On the other hand, balls similarly impacted have given rise to disease, and in some bones, as those of the pelvis, have produced such constitutional irritation as to lead to a fatal termination. Balls lodging in the circumscribed cavities of the body or their contained viscera require notice elsewhere.