wide, surrounded by a firm, smooth, almost cartilaginous margin, without any inflammation near it. Mr. Taylor properly points out, that the sudden occurrence of such violent symptoms so long after a meal is incompatible with the action of any poison which could cause perforation in fifteen hours; and that the characters of the perforation were those of a natural disease long latent. He could not detect a trace of any poison in the stomach.[183]—In some cases, as in that of M. Duparcque, the pain at the moment the perforation is completed is not at first violent, because the close proximity of some adjoining organ, such as the liver, prevents the contents of the stomach from escaping for a time, so that inflammation of the peritonæum is but gradually developed. The third variety of spontaneous perforation is of a much more singular kind. It is produced not by ordinary ulceration, but by a jelly-like softening of the coats. The gelatinization sometimes extends over a great extent of surface, affecting chiefly the villous coat, so that the aperture through the other membranes is surrounded by extensive pulpiness of the internal membrane. It is seldom accompanied by vascularity. Its symptoms are exceedingly obscure. In adults there is very rarely any symptom at all till the perforation is complete;[184] in children, as appears from a paper by Dr. J. Gairdner of this city, and another by Dr. Pitschaft, a German author,[185] the early symptoms indicate an obscure chronic gastritis. The nature of this singular disease will be discussed in the section on the morbid appearances. At present it may merely be observed, that the injury caused to the coats of the stomach seems to be precisely the same with the gelatinization, which is sometimes found after death in persons who had no symptoms of an affection of the stomach, and which is ascribed by John Hunter,[186] and most British pathologists, to the solvent action of the gastric juice in the dead body. This disease is well described by Laisné in his thesis formerly quoted. The following is a good example: a young lady, previously in good health, was awakened at three one morning with excruciating pain in the stomach, which nothing could alleviate. She expired seven hours after; and on dissection two holes were found in the back part of the stomach, surrounded with much softening of the villous coat.[187] Another case will be mentioned in page 118.—The appearances produced by this disease have been mistaken for the effects of corrosive poisons.