Late Symptoms Due to Traumatic Hemopericardium

MOST physicians believe that death ensues rapidly after penetrating wounds of the heart. In a Philadelphia police station a prisoner was recently found dead in a cell with 3 other men. The medical examiner noted at autopsy that the man had been stabbed with an ice pick, and was quoted as saying that the stabbing could not have occurred more than an hour before death and that the victim probably died within twenty minutes.1 The other 3 men were suspected of the killing until it was discovered that the victim had been stabbed three days before death. He had walked . . .