Annual report ... 1809.

  • Royal Humane Society (London, England)
Date:
[1810?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report ... 1809. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/124 (page 2)
    tion; and notwithstanding the great interest with whigh^ d priori^ it was natural to suppose it would fill every thinking mind, we hear no more of it, at that time, among our own countrymen. Though several instances had occurred, in various, parts of the Continent, which pointed out the possi¬ bility of recovering, in many cases, those who were drowaied*; yet the attention they excited was limited and transient. M. Reamur communicated, in 1767, to the Academy of Sciences at Paris, some instances of resuscitation which had occurred in Switzerland. Holland, being intersected by numerous canals and inland seas, its inhabitants were, consequently, much exposed to accidents by water; and many persons were drowned from the want of proper assistance. Hence, in the year 1767, a Society was formed at Amsterdam, which offered premiums to those who saved the life of a citizen in danger of perishing by water : it proposed to publish the methods of treatment, and to give an ac¬ count of the cases of recovery. Instigated by this ex¬ ample, the Magistrates of Health at Milan and Venice issued orders, in 1768, for the treatment of drowned persons. The City of Hamburgh appointed a similar ordinance to be read in all the churches, extending their succour, not merely to the drowmed, but to the strangled, to those suffocated by noxious vapours, and to the frozen. The first part of the Dutch memoirs was translated into the Russian language, by command of the Empress. In 1769 an edict was published in Ger¬ many, extending its directions and encouragements to every ca.s^‘ of apparent death, which afforded a possi¬ bility