Accidents from the electric current : a contribution to the study of the action of currents of high potential upon the human organism / by Philip Coombs Knapp.

  • Knapp, Philip Coombs.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Accidents from the electric current : a contribution to the study of the action of currents of high potential upon the human organism / by Philip Coombs Knapp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    Report for 1888 cites one fatal case m Lynn, but the other cases have probably not been put under a special heading; at least, I learn from Dr. Draper that he has seen two cases at the City Hospital morgue. Within a few months a horse and a dog have been killed in this vicinity. Brown11 gives a partial list of ninety-one cases up to May, 1889, chiefly in this country, but he thinks this list contains less than half the cases. A good many cases have appeared in the newspapers since his book was published. Judging from the newspaper accounts of the cases of death from currents of high potential, the victim either dies at once, or dies in a few minutes with signs of extreme pain, marked tetanic spasm of the muscles, and deep burning of the flesh. Recorded autopsies are few. Sheild and Delepine12 report a case where rigor mortis was well-marked; the blood was not abnormal but extremely fluid; the heart was not contracted and contained no clots. The muscles were firm, the skin congested. The median nerve was unchanged. There was a blister on the finger which was examined with very great care, and they thought that the appearances in the skin differed from those of an ordinary blister. Grange18 gives a report of the autopsy on two men who took hold of a Brush-light wire in climbing a wall. The first man had slight burns, and cadaveric rigidity. The blood was fluid and arterial; there were ecchymoses in the viscera; and the meninges of the brain were adherent to the convolutions. The second man had burns of the hands ; the left ventricle of the heart was contracted ; the lungs and brain were much congested. In animals killed by electricity, Grange found adhesions of the 11 Harold P. Brown : The comparative Danger to Life of the Alter- nating and Continuous Electrical Currents, third edition, 1889. >! Shield and Delepine : BritiBh Medical Journal, March 14,1885. 11 Grange : Annates d'hygiene puhlique, January and April, 1885.