“J. Milford Barnett, M.D., Edin.
“Belfast, January 11, 1896.”
This test has frequently failed, and should not be relied upon.
AUSCULTATION.
The stethoscope, which is regarded by many medical practitioners as an infallible means of preventing premature burial, has proved a broken reed in hundreds of cases, and can be of use only when applied with other tests. Dr. Roger S. Chew, of Calcutta, writes to me, February, 1896:—
“The British Medical Journal (September 28, 1895) tells us that the careful use of the stethoscope will enable a medical man to distinguish a living from a dead body. AUSCULTATION.Auscultation may give startling results, and the body yet be absolutely dead. I recollect an instance of death from cobra-bite, when, though decomposition had set in, the relatives refused to believe she was dead, because one of them declared that, though he did not see her chest rise and fall, he had distinctly heard her sigh. A medical man was called in, applied the stethoscope over her thorax, and declared he could hear sounds from her lungs, and a peculiar ‘sough,’ ‘sough’ towards the apex of the heart. So far he was right, but, as the girl had already been dead some fourteen hours, and the weather was warm, the sounds he heard were those of the escape of the putrefactive gases bubbling upward and unable to find exit, as her mouth was closed with a chin-bandage, and her nostrils plugged with mucus. To convince the parents that the girl was really dead, I offered to perform artificial respiration, to which end I untied the bandage, prized open her jaws, and pressed heavily on her thorax, when some of the imprisoned gases escaped, emitting an abominable odour that brought conviction of the girl being beyond all hope.
“In another case, that of my son, aged two years, after a series of brain symptoms and severe clonic convulsions preceding an outbreak of confluent small-pox, the stethoscope told me and a medical friend who was present that my little boy had ceased to exist; but a liberal application of ice to his head and cardiac region, together with violent friction and artificial respiration vigorously employed for forty minutes, restored the child to me, and I thanked God that I had refused to accept the evidence of the stethoscope as final.”
ELECTRICITY.
The application of the electric current is a powerful restorative agent in cases of suspended animation, if judiciously applied. Struve in his essay, “Suspended Animation,” p. 151, under the head of “Apparent death from a fall,” says:—“A girl, three years of age, fell from a window two stories high upon the pavement. Though she was considered as lifeless, Mr. Squires, a natural philosopher, applied electricity. Almost twenty minutes elapsed before the shocks produced any effect. At last when some of the electric force pervaded the breast he observed a slight motion of the heart. The child soon after began to breathe and groan with great difficulty, and after some minutes a vomiting ensued. For a few days the patient remained in a state of stupefaction, but in the course of a week she was perfectly restored to health.”
THE ELECTRICAL TEST.