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For quite a long time subsequently the child remained in an ailing condition, with symptoms of disordered digestion. Its death, however, which occurred at a somewhat later period, was apparently dependent upon an entirely different disease,—one that had no connection whatever with the incident just described.

After reviewing all the evidence in this extraordinary case, Hufeland sees no reason for doubting the correctness of the preceding report in all its essential features. As to the manner in which a mouse may find its way into the human stomach, the following statement is permissible. To begin with, it is a matter of common knowledge that mice often run about an occupied bedroom at night in search of food, and that their sense of smell is extraordinarily acute. Furthermore, it is easy to understand how a mouse, after tracing the odor of food to the partially open mouth of a sleeping child, would not hesitate, if pressed by hunger, to enter that cavity for the purpose of securing possession of the particles of food lodged therein; and it is also easy to understand how the intruder might then be caught as in a trap by the closing of the mouth which spontaneously followed. Under such circumstances the creature’s choice of the oesophageal route into the stomach as a way of escape was most natural, and equally so were the efforts made by the beast—as shown by the pain at the pit of the stomach and by the retching of a bloody fluid—to gnaw its way through the gastric mucous membrane.