A Bullet in the Lung

For reasons elsewhere formulated, 1 magnetism is of very limited usefulness in the extraction of foreign bodies from the air and food passages. The fundamental limitation, of course, is that to be influenced by a magnet the foreign body must be composed, in part at least, of magnetic iron, steel, nickel or cobalt. This requirement eliminates more than 90 per cent of the foreign bodies, as shown by magnetic tests of the 1,900 foreign bodies removed from the air and food passages at the bronchoscopic clinics of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The case reported here, however, illustrates a new method of using magnetism as an aid in bronchoscopic removal of a foreign body from the lung. REPORT OF CASE History. —A Canadian soldier, while at the front in France in 1918, was wounded in action and was found to have a compound fracture of the left side of the lower jaw.