Inquest on the death of Agnes E. Lottimer before Dr. George C. Ball, coroner, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inquest on the death of Agnes E. Lottimer before Dr. George C. Ball, coroner, Brooklyn, N.Y. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    or forty of these in four tablespoons of water, and a teaspoonful once in two hours during the intermission. The paroxysms were now simply chill; she was not in bed; she had her chills in a chair; her chill wsa very light, and did not improve under it. I directed on Thursday, that if the chill returned on Friday she was to get half a cup of black coffee and a ta- blespoonful of lemon juice, on the accession of the chill. She took that; 1 saw her on Friday after the chill, and it had been very much mitigated and abbreviated ; directions were given to administer a similar dose of coffee and lemon juice one hour before the expected accession, and to repeat if the chill should appear. I saw on Saturday, about half past 11, she had passed through the chill and had headache ; I ordered nothing for her ; I returned and found her in convulsions, and gave her Belladonna and Opi- um in alternation, at first just the same doses as mentioned before, a tea- spoonful at the commencement of each convulsion after she received the first dose. After the first thirty minutes she got the same medicines, by my directions, with the advice of my friend Dr. Dunham, just the same as before, the strength of the tincture I do not know. Dr. Dunham prepared them. This was continued until about 4 o'clock, when the spasms changed their character; cicuta virosa was then substituted for opium, I think the fourth cen- tesimal, thirty or forty pellets to half a tumbler of water, and a teaspoonful dose given; this was continued up to a quarter before 5, when the spasm ceased. She took no more medicine under my direction until 9 o'clock, when we gave her belladonna of the third centesimal, in the same dose. I gave the coffee and lime juice, because it has cured agues for me and my friends. Up to the 10th, the deceased was laboring under inflammation of the membranes of the brain, uncomplicated with any other disease. For ten days after the 10th, it was ague and fever without an intermission, there was not sufficient vital power to bring about an intermission. After that ten days, it became a regular intermittent, and so continued uncomplicated, except with the pruritus, up to the three days before her death, and then continued up to her death complicated with mumps, which was translated to the membranes of the brain. I suppose that to have been the cause of these spasms. I did not at the time of the soreness and stiffness prescribe any thing for the mumps, simply because they did not appear in their specific form, and there was no fact to call for the change of the remedies which the greater evil of the ague and fever required. I suppose this translation of the mumps to the brain took place on Saturday morning ; I did not see her until half past 11, and then went home to prepare medicines for her general sick condition. On my recall my remedies were addressed to this state of her case. I did not consider her at all dangerous previous to Satur- day at 2 o'clock, and but for the translation of the mumps bringing on congestion of the brain, I know no reason why she should not have recovered. I suppose the dark, thick blood that issued from her mouth and nose came from the lungs, proceeding from congestion of the lungs. The congestion of the lungs might have arisen from one of two causes ; first, the mechanical effect of the embarrassed respiration (I attach no particular importance to this, the probability is the other way) ; and the other, metastasis of the mumps from the brain to the lungs. The reason why I think this might have taken place is, that the spasms of the muscles of the eyelids, eye-balls, face, and neck ceased while the respiratory organs were still subject to spasm ; and