Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1878 — Gases of Drowning-Suggestions. [ARTICLE]

Gases of Drowning-Suggestions.

It may have struck the readers of the Sun that its reports of deaths from drowning have been unusually numerous this seaabn. Many of thecases have also been very sad ones, so little would have saved the victims. Nv one • who has not been a witness of aq accident of the kind, or who ha* not very nearly been the principal in one. caq imagine the ahort space of time within which death by drowning occurs and all the efforts for resuscitation prove futile. Frequently the whole thing is over and the person drowned before the spectators have recovered from their bewilderment or realized the fatal character of the disaster. In one minute and a half the life of a warm-blooded animal undergoing drowning is suspended, but is not finally extinguished if proper remedies are immediately and vigorously uaed. Even in that brief space of time the lungs are in a state of collapse. The arterial blood has been converted in a great measure into venous, and is incapable of any longer maintaining the principal organs. But up to this time life is not extinct. It is only suspended. The rescue, however, must be prompt. Life, as we have said, is apparently quenched in one minute ana a half. After four minutes, or at the utmost five, the victim is considered beyond recovery. In no in-

stance, it is authoritatively asserted, where the experiment has been fully and fairly tried, has a drowned person been found capable of resuscitation after from two to five minutes of complete submersion. It is a popular belief that water gets into the lungs and stomach, and means are often taken to get rid of it. In fact very little water finds its way into either. The first thing an apparently drowned person requires is air. The second, warmth and circulation. The efforts to restore breathing must be commenced immediately and energetically. They must be persevered in for one or two hours, or until a medical man has pronounced life to be extinct. Efforts to promote warmth and circulation, beyond removing the wet clothing and drying the skin, must not be made until the first appearance of natural breathing, for if the circulation of the blood be induced before breathing has commenced, the restoration of lire will be endangered. Therefore, although blankets and warm clothing should be immediately sent for, they should not be used at once.

To restore breathing, place the body on the ground, face downward, with one of the arms under the head, and, observing that the tongue falls forward, leaving the windpipe free. If there be only slight breathing, on none at all, turn the body on the side, not the face and chest, and dash cold water on them. Excite the nostrils with smelling-salts, if at hand. All this must be done without the loss of a moment. If It fail, replace the body facedownward, support the chest’by a folded coat or other article, turn the body gently on the side and a little over, and then keep turning it quickly on the face and back again, about fifteen times to the minute, now and then varying the side. On each occasion when the body is turned upon its face, keep up a uniform but brisk pressure between the shoulder-blades, removing the pressure immediately before turning it on its side. These are all simple measures, and we have put them in the plainest words, so that all can understand what is first to be done in a case of drowning and how to do it, without waiting for a physician. If breathing is thus restored, everybody knows how to promote circulation by warm flannels, hot bottles and rubbing. When the blood circulates, the patient may be given a teaspoonful of warm water, and, if it is swallowed, a small quantity of wine, brandy, coffee or other stimulant. He should then be put to bed and a disposition to sleep encouraged. A word of caution, which, in some cases, is very much needed: Under no circumstances roll the body over a barrel or hold it up by tbe feet, under a prevalent but erroneous notion that it drains the water out; nor allow the body to remain on its back, nor place it in a warm bath, unless under the advice of a physician, and then only as a momentary excitant We do not repeat the more technical directions to be followed in desperate cases. It would be extremely difficult for any but a trained physician to comply with them understandingly, and in unskillful hands the attempt might do more harm than good. Primarily, in all cases, the first duty is to send for a physician, wherever that is practicable. In the meantime the directions we have given should be at once followed* and persevered in for two hours, if there is the slightest hope that life may be saved, from the fact that the body has not been continuously submerged in the water for more than five minutes.— Baltimore. Sun.