"Diphtheria causes death in several ways. Commonly the false membrane grows more rapidly than it can be removed, and the patient is practically strangled, or asphyxiated by it. It is in such a condition that tracheotomy is essayed, affording a breathing aperture below the locality of the disease. It is not uncommon for the patient apparently to combat the more frightful form of the disease, so that the false membrane is thrown off, and the parts left apparently in a fair state of health, so far as freedom to breathe and swallow is concerned. But then it may happen, especially in anæmic individuals, that this fight against the disease has left the patient in a state of enervation and lowered vitality, which borders on collapse. The extreme crisis is passed, but the danger lurks insidiously near. At any moment a change for the worse might occur, whilst recovery would be very slow. When death comes in this form, it is a gradual lessening of vital action throughout the body; a slow slipping away of life, as it were."
"Exactly! So that such a condition might readily be mistaken for a gradually deepening coma?"
"Yes, sir. Whilst the term coma is applied to a specific condition, the two forms of death are very similar. In fact, I might say it is a sort of coma, which after all is common in many diseases."
"So that you would say that this coma, did not specifically indicate morphine poisoning?"
"No, sir, it could not be said."
"How was the pulse?"
"The pulse was slow, but that is what we expect with this form of death."
"So that the slow pulse would not necessarily indicate poison?"
"Not at all."
"Was the breathing stertorous?"