Assuming the probabilities to be in favor of death by submersion, the question next turns upon the character of the event.
In the absence of lesions it is almost impossible to say whether the individual fell in, jumped in, or was pushed in the submerging fluid. The person’s antecedents should be inquired into—whether subject to epilepsy, vertigo, intemperance, or mental aberration. Alcoholism is an important factor in accidental drowning, and a person intoxicated may be drowned in very shallow water. A few years ago a young man over six feet tall, while bathing in a tributary of the Potomac River, near Washington, was drowned in only three feet of water. On considering all these circumstances, it may not be possible, even after careful inspection of the body and minute exploration of all the organs, to declare the drowning the consequence of an accident. The existence of traces of violence or of injury which may have occasioned death or disability, of such a nature as to render the person unable to defend himself, would seem to merit particular attention. But their presence leads to further consideration—were the marks of injury caused by the water itself, by some object in the water, or were they self-inflicted? Dislocations, fractures, and other injuries have been caused by jumping or falling into the water from a great height. I know an instance of a professional who, on jumping from a height of ninety feet, split his upper lip on striking the water with his mouth open. The autopsy in the case of Odlum, the Brooklyn Bridge jumper, is said to have shown rupture of the liver. On the other hand, many persons jump from great heights into water with perfect impunity. For many weeks at the London Aquarium a performer has nightly jumped into a tank from an elevation of 127 feet, and several persons have successfully jumped from bridges much higher.
Objects in the water that may account for cadaveric lesions are numerous. I have known a soldier, a good swimmer, to break his neck on diving from a river bank.[946] Other traumatic lesions may occur in a rapid current, from the breaking up of ice, from the screw or paddle-wheel of a passing steamer, or from aquatic animals.
A matter much discussed in connection with this subject—that of shark-bites—may enter into the question of survivorship where it is alleged that several persons during shipwreck or other disasters at sea have been devoured by sharks. Though an occasional accident, such bites are more a figment of the mind than a reality, as the concurrent testimony of disinterested observers will show. After years of investigation among nautical people and much experience as a swimmer in widely different parts of the world, I have no personal knowledge of such injuries, and have met but two persons that had any actual personal knowledge of shark-bites.
Documentary evidence as to shark-bites is also very scanty. During the last fifty years soldiers by the tens of thousands have swum at Fort Monroe, Virginia, yet there is no record of one having been bitten by a shark; nor have I been able to ascertain that any accident of the kind has occurred at Malta or at Gibraltar. There does not appear to be a record of any one ever having been bitten off the British Isles. I have been unable to ascertain that a single bite of the kind is reported among the medical records of our War or Navy Department or those of the Marine Hospital. In the West Indies but few facts are reported indicating danger from sharks, and these are not well authenticated. The same may be said as to newspaper accounts, which deserve about as much credence as the reports concerning sea-serpents. A few years ago a public journal gave an account of a boy who was bitten while swimming near New York and afterward died in a hospital.
But medical literature has a few reports of shark-bites. After ten years’ diligent search I have found seven references, the earliest in the London Medical Gazette, 1823, and the latest in the London Lancet, 1886. The bites occurred in Australia, South Africa, and India. The Hooghley and Ganges Rivers are the worst place in the world for sharks and alligators. A particular kind of shark, the Carcharras Gangeticus, which is very fierce and bold, sometimes dashes among the crowds at the bathing ghâts, and has been known to bite a boy in two feet of water. All persons bitten at these places generally die from the bite, for the reason that the shark, living on carrion, portions of which stick between the teeth, carries infection to those whom it may afterward bite. The former habit of throwing the dead in the river is supposed to account for the boldness of these particular sharks in attacking the human species.
Self-inflicted wounds rather suggest suicide, as numerous instances attest, where one or two kinds of death were intended to make assurance doubly sure. I once saw an Eskimo stab himself and then jump overboard from a ship off the Siberian coast. But as a rule suicidal drowning is unaccompanied by traumatic lesions, unless it be those produced by falls. Hence the absence of lesions leads to the presumption that the individual while living fell into the water or other fluid accidentally or voluntarily.
Exception may be made in the case of infanticide and homicidal submersion as the result of surprise, where a person taken unawares is suddenly and unexpectedly pushed or thrown into the water. A case in point is that of a man suddenly robbed and seized by three persons, who threw him into the river. Another is that of a man who, wishing to get rid of his wife, gave her arsenic. The effects of the poison being slow he induced her to take a walk along the river, and when her back was turned he pushed her rapidly off the bank into the stream, where she drowned. Death by submersion is rarely the result of murderous intent, and in the case of adults it is suddenly resorted to in order to paralyze resistance and facilitate the success of crime.
Submersion is oftener intended to hide a crime. A body may be taken from the water after murder or rape. Whether the cadaver is recent or one that has lain in the water a long time, the expert is confronted with a question of the differences that he may expect to find in a body drowned and one thrown into the water after death. This difficulty can only be resolved by considering all the signs and lesions furnished by the autopsy. No single sign or post-mortem appearance is characteristic of drowning, and none enables us surely to diagnosticate death by submersion either in putrid or fresh cadavers. Nor do we have any significant infallible signs that may serve as a parallel between the immerged post mortem and the submerged. The exterior signs being nearly the same in the two, the diagnosis must necessarily depend upon assembled circumstances, and these are liable to vary.