THE QUESTION OF PAIN IN DROWNING. 93 



THE QUESTION OF PAIN IN DROWNING. 



By ROGER S. TRACY, M. D. 



EVERY one has tried the experiment of " holding the breath," and 

 has found that after the lapse of a minute, or a minute and a half 

 at the farthest, there supervenes a most peculiar and intolerable kind 

 of anguish. Nature then takes the management of the lungs out of 

 our hands into hers, and we breathe in spite of ourselves. The distress 

 felt at such times we think of when we read of a death by drowning or 

 hanging ; and, although it has been asserted over and over again that 

 such a death is painless, hardly any one really believes it. And yet I 

 think it can be shown not only that drowning and hanging are painless 

 modes of death, but why they are so. 



When a person, who cannot swim, falls into deep water, he is seized 

 with a sudden and tremendous fright. The exceptions to this rule are 

 too few to be worth noticing. This fright, of itself, kills some persons, 

 and they go to the bottom like a plummet. Women are very apt to 

 faint, and, as they sink beneath the surface and respiration still goes on 

 involuntarily, they probably drown before they regain consciousness. 

 Plethoric persons, or those in whom the degenerative processes of old 

 age have weakened the coats of the arteries, may have a stroke of 

 apoplexy, partly from the sudden emotional shock, and partly from the 

 chill of the water, which, by driving the blood from the surface, over- 

 fills the vessels of the internal organs. In fact, it is estimated by 

 Taylor, in his " Medical Jurisprudence," that of all drowned persons 

 twenty-five per cent, die of pure asphyxia, and in the remainder the 

 asphyxia is complicated by syncope and apoplexy. The chances are, 

 then, three out of four, that a person who falls into the water and 

 drowns will die a painless death, because he becomes insensible on the 

 instant. But what about the remaining fourth ? 



In the first place, it is to be remarked that persons who have come 

 so near drowning as to be unconscious when taken from the water, and 

 so must have passed through all the suffering that attends death by 

 drowning, say that they remember no feeling of pain whatever. This 

 declaration must have great weight, for it is not to be supposed that 

 they could forget such terrible distress as that which follows when the 

 respiration is suspended voluntarily. They all describe their feeling 

 much in the same way : " I remember falling into the water. It was 

 dreadfully cold. I felt my clothes clinging about me and hampering 

 my movements, and as I rose to the surface I gasped for breath. My 

 mouth was filled with water, and I sank again. I was chilled through 

 and through ; then a sort of delirium came over me, and there was a 

 ringing in my ears. I remember nothing more." The last symptom 



