Remarks on the alleged fatal case of chloroform-inhalation.

  • Simpson, James Young, 1811-1870.
Date:
[1848]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the alleged fatal case of chloroform-inhalation. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    %? with the best of motives and intentions, water and brandy were poured into the girl's mouth. They were of course allowed to rest in and fill up the pharynx of the patient, as in her state of syncope and anaesthesia she was not in a condition to swallow them. The attempt at swallowing mentioned in the evidence, was, I have no doubt, an attempt at breathing, or breathing combined with swal- lowing. But it was impossible for the patient, in her weak state, to inspire through a medium of water and brandy, any more than it would have been possible to inspire if the head and face had been completely submersed in the same fluid. The liquid would be partially drawn into the larynx. She rattled in her throat. In a minute more she ceased to breathe. In commenting on injuries of the head, Mr Guthrie, when speaking of the treatment of concussion of the brain, a state ren- dering the sufferer, like Mr Meggison's patient, senseless and mo- tionless, and the countenance deadly pale, correctly observes, it is improper to put strong drinks into his mouth, for he cannot swallow; and, if he should be so far recovered as to make the attempt, they might possibly enter the larynx and destroy him. Would not precisely the same accident occur if, in any case of deep apoplexy, epilepsy, syncope, or narcotism, in which the power of swallowing was temporarily suspended, we filled the throat and mouth with brandy and water, or any other liquid ? The girl died, then, as I conceive, from the nimia cura medicinw,— choked or asphyxiated by the very means intended to revive her. And this view of the case is further borne out by the pathological fact, that the appearances observed at the post-mortem inspection of her body, were all exactly those produced by simple asphyxia. I shall quote the principal morbid appearances in an arranged order, for the purpose of facilitating the reference to them. In the first column of the following table I shall cite verbatim the description of the principal morbid appearances met with on open- ing the girl's body, in the words of the official evidence laid before the coroner. In the second column I shall, for the sake of com- parison, cite the description of the principal morbid appearances met with on opening the bodies of those who have died from asphyxia; and for this purpose I shall quote verbatim the account of these appearances given by Dr Carpenter, in a careful and ela- borate article on asphyxia published in the Library of Medicine, Vol. III. p. 221. I take the extracts from Dr Carpenter's essay, merely because they are the first that come to hand. I might equally make the extracts from Dr Roget's article on asphyxia in the Cyclopaedia oj Medicine; or from any other essay on the subject.