Spontaneous Lateral Ventral Hernia

ADRIANvan derSPIGELIUS (1578-1625) was the first to describe the semilunar line. Klinklosch¹accurately located a hernia in this line. River²collected 112 cases from the world's literature and added four cases of his own to bring the total number to 116. Four of these cases had previously appeared in the American literature.³Not included in River's review are reports by Miller⁴(one case), Cullen⁵(three cases), Mathews⁶(11 cases), McGlannan⁷(one case) and Sarot⁸(one case). River may have excluded Mathews' 11 cases because the hernias were of the inferior type and are frequently classified as a variety of direct inguinal hernia. Further reports by various authors,⁹and including Mathews' 11 cases, bring the total number of collected cases to 157, 32 of which appeared in the American literature. The present report concerns four patients for whom the diagnosis of spontaneous lateral ventral hernia appearing above the inferior