On some forms of sudden death, and sudden death in general / by Alex. Ogston, M.D.

  • Ogston, Alexander, Sir, 1844-1929.
Date:
[1869], [©1869]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some forms of sudden death, and sudden death in general / by Alex. Ogston, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    It is hopeless, then, to expect enh'ghtenment on this head from the general practitioner; and the sole other source of information consists in the judicial inquests on cases of sudden death, where the results of these are obtainable. Jt has therefore been the object, in putting together the above tables and the following remarks upon them, to compare the results furnished by such sources, with the notions, or, at least, the utterances of many who, holding the position of fathers and heads in the profession, are yet most active agents in perverting our registrar's returns to a-monstrous extent. Indeed, when regard is had of the multitude of people who are returned, after sudden death, as having succumbed to heart disease and apoplexy, and of children who are rashly supposed to have been overlain, not to mention other favouiite but erroneous hypotheses, it must be con- fessed that very many columns. of these returns are worse than worthless. In relation to Table'I, where the results of 580 cases of sudden death, as disclosed by post-mortem examination, are brought to- gether, some few explanations are necessary. The table is compiled from a series of full records of complete post-mortem examinations in cases of sudden and suspicious death, made with the view of reporting thereon to the Crown authorities. Those cases embrace many deaths which, under usual circumstances, might not have come under the denomination of sudden and suspicious, but it has been deemed better to allow them for the present to retain their position, as they illustrate very well the general run of disease, and prove that many maladies, in themselves almost incapable of remain- ing unrecognised, under peculiar external circumstances, or pos- sessing an unusually latent character, contribute their mite towards filUng up the catalogue of sudden deaths. In glancing over the list, for instance, it cainiot but excite surprise to see such maladies as enteric fever, scarlatina, erysipelas, starvation, &c., figuring among the causes of sudden death, and it would require an account of the peculiarities of each particular case, an undertaking which space forbids us entering upon, to vindicate for such diseases the position they are made to occupy. But the fact remains, that such diseases do, under exceptional circumstances, .destroy life in such a manner as to deserve being classed among the others in the above table, hydrophobia being, perhaps, the only one which ought properly to have been omitted from it. Besides these more strilcing diseases, there are a number of .others which could not have been expected to occupy so prominent a place as they hold; diseases which, though generally running their course under the observation of the physician, do sometimes progress in so latent and insidious a manner that their existence remains unknown and unsuspected by the individual himself, and the autopsy gives the first hint of their having been present. Among these may be 2