By contact with corrosive chemical substances, solid or liquid.
Scalds are produced by the application of heated liquids, at or near their boiling-points, or in a gaseous form—as steam.
The injuries produced will depend upon the degree of temperature, the period of exposure to its action, and the extent of surface involved.
The danger to life depends more on the extent of surface injured than the intensity of the burn or scald upon a limited area, unless the position of the burn render it peculiarly dangerous. Even though the injuries be comparatively superficial, if they involve one-third or one half of the surface of the body they must be regarded as fatal. They may prove fatal by shock, by asphyxia, by constant and profuse discharge from the injured surface, from absorption of septic matter, from secondary inflammations of internal organs and serous membranes—pleurisy, peritonitis, meningitis, perforating ulcer of the duodenum. Children succumb more quickly than adults to burns and scalds—the simplest, in their case, often proving fatal.
The cause of early death from burns and scalds is looked upon as a disorder of the blood following injury to the red corpuscles by the heat, and that this is more easily brought about in children, because of the thinness of the skin, and the red corpuscles being less capable of resistance.
The following table gives the different degrees of burns:
1. Superficial inflammation, characterised by redness without blistering.
2. Acute inflammation, the epidermis raised, forming vesicles containing serum.
3. Destruction of the superficial layers of the true skin.
4. Destruction of the true skin and subcutaneous cellular tissues.