The great saving in sulphuric acid, amounting to about 50 per cent. of the present consumption, has already been pointed out. Another advantage the author merely mentions, namely, the easier condensation of the sulphurous fumes in refineries situated in cities, because the larger amount of acid available for dissolving greatly facilitates working and makes the usual frequent admission of air into the refining pot for the purpose of stirring and testing unnecessary.
The more air is excluded from the refining fumes the easier they can be condensed.
Work may be carried on continuously, the vessels C and D being empty by the time a new solution is finished in A A. Thus, the plant shown in the diagram, covering 26 ft. by 16 ft., allows the refining of 40,000 ounces of fine silver in 24 hours; that is, four charges in A A of 800 pounds each.—F. Gutzkow, Eng. and Mining J.
A CASE OF DROWNING, WITH RESUSCITATION.
By F.A. BURRALL, M.D., New York.
As is usual at this season, casualties from drowning are of frequent occurrence. No class of emergencies is of a more startling character, and I think that a history of the case which I now present offers some peculiar features, and will not be without interest to physicians.
The accident which forms the subject of this paper occurred August 29, 1890, at South Harpswell, Casco Bay, Me., where I was passing my vacation.
At about 9.30 A.M., M. B——, an American, aged eighteen, the son of a fisherman, a young man of steady habits and a good constitution, with excellent muscular development, and who had never before required the aid of a physician, was seen by the residents of the village to fall forward from a skiff into the water and go down with uplifted hands. I could not learn that he rose at all after the first submersion. Two men were standing near a bluff which overlooked the bay, and after an instant's delay in deciding that an accident had occurred, they ran over an uneven and undulating pasture for a distance of two hundred and fifty paces to the shore. One of them, after a quick decision not to swim out to where the young man had fallen in and dive for him, removed trousers and boots and waded out five yards to a boat, which he drew into the shore and entered with his companion, taking him to a yacht which lay two hundred and forty yards from the shore, in the padlocked cabin of which was a boat hook. The padlock was unfastened, the boat hook taken, and they proceeded by the boat directly to where the young man lay. He was seen through the clear water, lying at a depth of nine feet at the bottom of the bay, on his back, with upturned face and arms extended from the sides of the body. He was quickly seized by the boat hook, drawn head upward to the surface, and with the inferior portion of the body hanging over the stern of the boat, and the superior supported in the arms of his rescuer, was rowed rapidly to the shore, where he was rolled a few times, and then placed prone upon a tub for further rolling. I was told that much water came from his mouth. Meantime I had been sent for to where I was sitting, one hundred and fifty-one yards from the scene, and I arrived to find him apparently lifeless on the tub, and to be addressed with the remark, "Well, doctor, I suppose we are doing all that can be done."
I have given these details, as from a study of them I was aided in deciding the time of submersion, as well as the intervals which transpired before the intelligent use of remedies. It is also remarkable that, notwithstanding all which has been written about ready remedies for drowning, no one present knew anything about them, although living in a seafaring community.