Medico-legal treatise on homicide by external violence.

  • Watson, Alexander, 1799-1879.
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medico-legal treatise on homicide by external violence. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    side of the road unable to speak. He was carried into a neigh - bouring- cottage, gave one or two groans, and expired. On dis- section, Dr Craigie and I found that he had died from internal haemorrhage, chiefly into the right cavity of the chest; about three pounds of blood having been effused from a laceration of the right lung near to the origin of its vessels. The liver was also lacerated, which had given rise to an escape of blood into the abdomen. This individual seemed to have fallen from his cart, and the wheel of it had passed obliquely across his right side. None of his ribs were broken, but there was an abrasion of the skin. Fatal haemorrhage into the cavity of the chest, may likewise take place from a wound of the axillary internal mammary, or intercostal arteries. Case 88.—Walter Redpath was tried at Edinburgh, 26th November 1810, for the murder of Andrew M'Kechnie by a gun-shot wound. The bullet or slug had penetrated the right side of the thorax betwixt the first and third ribs, the second having been shattered by the injury. The superior lobe of the lung was wounded, the axillary artery completely divided, and the cavity of the thorax filled with blood. This wound of course caused immediate death. Case 89.—Mrs Gow, whose husband was executed here in December 1831, was killed by having been stabbed with a knife in the chest. The knife penetrated the chest on the left side of the sternum, between the cartilages of the third and fourth ribs, and it divided completely across the internal mammary artery and vein of that side. The blood flowed from the wound very copiously at the moment of its infliction. She was taken to the Royal Infirmary, where she was under the care of Dr John Campbell. She seemed to do well for a few days ; but it, was evident that there was some fluid in the left side of the chest, preventing free respiration, and also hindering the pa- tient from being able to turn upon the right side. As there had been no great degree of inflammatory action (probably in consequence of the loss of blood she had sustained), the fluid