GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.
The frequence and importance of drowning having arrested attention from the days of Noah’s Ark and those of Hippocrates down to the present time, it is quite possible to array in chronological order the fictitious, transitory, and positive periods that mark the sequence of ideas touching the subject.
Mooted questions relative to drowning have been debated since the fourteenth century; and modern statistics show the great development of this class of emergency, than which none is of more startling character. In France between four and five thousand cases of this kind of accident are officially recognized each year, which is about one-third of all the accidental deaths, and the number appears to increase yearly. Nearly the same figures apply to the inland waters of England and Wales, not including the coast. The Board of Trade Return shows that out of 86,695 seamen who died in English ships abroad, 53,673 were drowned, and a late report of the Fisherman’s Federation places the number drowned in the inland waters and upon the immediate coasts of the United Kingdom and its adjacent islands as 6,268 annually. The many hundreds drowned in the late Victoria disaster and in the great storm that swept the British Isles are matters of current knowledge. In our own country accounts of drowning are of daily occurrence, and help to the drowning forms the greater part of the work done by that noble governmental branch, the Life Saving Service. Not only does the sea claim its numerous victims, but the great floods and cyclones have destroyed thousands, while on the lakes and rivers drowning accidents are lamentably frequent. If the statistics of such accidents were as available as those of the late war, for instance, the exhibit would doubtless be surprising. Where the aggregation of killed in action is shown to be 67,058, there were drowned 106 officers and 4,838 men. The small regular army lost 5 officers and 89 men from this cause; the negro troops, 6 officers and 289 men; and the volunteers furnished a large contingent, the State of Ohio alone having lost 14 officers and 770 men from drowning.[935]
Aside from the point of view of public hygiene and that of pathology, further evidence is not wanting to show the medico-legal value of the phenomena of drowning, and the frequency and importance of the judicial questions that may arise in this class of accidents.