Accidents : popular directions for their immediate treatment : with observations on poisons and their antidotes / by Henry Wheaton Rivers.

  • Rivers, Henry Wheaton.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Accidents : popular directions for their immediate treatment : with observations on poisons and their antidotes / by Henry Wheaton Rivers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    21/118 (page 15)
    the patient may be discouraging in the extreme, and death apparently have taken place, yet instan- ces have been where recovery has ensued even after the lapse of eight or ten hours, notwithstand- ing all the symptoms of the patient seemed at first to render his restoration impossible. Asphyxia from inhaling carbonic acid gas. This is the same form of asphyxia as that last described, and is caused by the inhalation of car- bonic acid gas which accumulates at the bottom of old wells, coal pits, brewers' vats, and mines of different kinds, and is commonly known by the name of choke damp. It is this gas which proves destructive to per- sons in a confined room with burning charcoal, (described in the preceeding section of this chap- ter.) It is wholly incapable of supporting respi- ration or combustion. It may be detected in a well or pit by letting down a lighted candle, which if the gas be pres- ent will be immediately extinguished. This ought always to be done before descending into one of these cavities, as lives may freqently be saved by so doing. It is not always an easy matter to recover a body from the bottom of an old well or mine, and the effort often endangers the life of the par- ty who attempts it. This, however, should be