Fatal Impact — Concussion of the Heart

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Abstract
When he died on a winter evening in 1995, Matthew Messing was only 16 years old. It happened while he was playing in a high-school ice-hockey game in Quincy, Massachusetts. The referee said the boy was hit squarely in the chest by an opponent during a routine body-checking maneuver. The spectators noticed nothing unusual about the check; hockey players are hit like this all the time in competition. The boy was thrown to the ice, and he made a feeble effort to get up but fell back, his young body lifeless. It was over in an instant, as though he . . .