400 Historical 



January 23. The patient, less stiff, tried to rise, but his legs could 

 not support him, although when he was in the hammock, he could 

 move them as on the day before; lessened sensitivity. 



Pulse 70, easily depressed. Respiration normal, no pains; the 

 hearing which on the day before was rather weak on the left, had 

 returned to normal. 



I had plasters put on the lower limbs and along the spinal column. 

 Elder tea. Catheterisms in the morning. Soup. 



In the evening, the paralysis had gone; the patient urinated easily. 

 Nothing new in his condition; he had not defecated since the day of 

 the accident, that is, January 20. 



January 24. Legs in the same condition; pulse and respiration 

 normal. No movement of the bowels. The patient wished to eat .... 



January 27. Slight improvement, movements of the lower limbs 

 a little easier, although there was not much strength .... 



From that day to January 30, the improvement progressed very 

 slowly; then suddenly, February 1, the patient came up on deck and 

 one could hardly tell by his gait that his lower limbs were paralyzed. 



During the following days, the improvement was maintained; the 

 rectum alone was still paralyzed. There were no results unless enemas 

 were used. 



The patient was very intractable as long as his illness lasted; I 

 could testify that he was of a very weak character, and that he was 

 easily prostrated by pain. 



I wanted to purge him the very first day; but in spite of all my 

 persuasion, he would not consent. 



Up to February 5, he did not defecate and suffered greatly from 

 his constipation. I administered to him, without his knowing it, 80 

 centigrams of calomel in some milk; this purge brought on an 

 evacuation which was the signal for his complete recovery. From 

 that day, the rectum resumed its normal functions, and the health of 

 this diver was excellent. 



M. Gal gives three more observations of the same sort, the 

 details of which he gathered himself, although he did not see the 

 patients at the time of the accident. In the first case, death occur- 

 red as a result of the doctor's ignorance: 



August 5, 1869, a man named Nicolas Theodoros was seized by 

 paralysis of the lower limbs. 



This diver had been fishing on the shores of Crete since the 

 beginning of May, that is, for three months. He was a man of great 

 height and at the same time of an enormous corpulence, due chiefly 

 to the very considerable development of adipose tissue. 



August 5, he was fishing near Sitia, and for a week he had been 

 working in depths of twenty fathoms and more, that is, 30 to 35 

 meters. No serious symptom, no pain, gave him any warning, when 

 August 5, a quarter of an hour after coming up from a depth of 37 

 meters, he was seized by complete paralysis of the lower limbs. 



I learned from the Greeks who were diving from the same boat 

 that he had remained on the bottom more than a half-hour, that he 



