Gaudolphe collected 142 cases with 110 recoveries.
Injuries of the neck are usually inflicted with suicidal intent or in battle.

Cornelius Nepos says that while fighting against the Lacedemonians, Epaminondas was sensible of having received a mortal wound, and apprehending that the lance was stopping a wound in an important vessel, remarked that he would die when it was withdrawn.
When he was told that the Boeotians had conquered, exclaiming "I die unconquered," he drew out the lance and perished.

Petrus de Largenta speaks of a man with an arrow in one of his carotids, who was but slightly affected before its extraction, but who died immediately after the removal of the arrow.

Among the remarkable recoveries from injuries of the neck is that mentioned by Boerhaave, of a young man who lived nine or ten days after receiving a sword-thrust through the neck between the 4th and 5th vertebrae, dividing the vertebral artery.
Benedictus, Bonacursius, and Monroe, all mention recovery after cases of cut-throat in which the esophagus as well as the trachea was wounded, and food protruded from the external cut.

Warren relates the history of a case in which the vertebral artery was wounded by the discharge of a pistol loaded with pebbles.