194 



an external cause and suspending respiration, as submersion, strangu- 

 lation, the diminution of oxygen in the air inhaled, Sec. The only dif 

 ference between real death and asphyxia, is, that in this last state, the 

 principle of life may yet be re-animated, \vhilst, in the other, it is com- 

 pletely extinct. 



Asphyxia takes place .in drowning, because the lungs, deprived of air, 

 no longer impart to the blood which passes through them, the qualities 

 essential to the support of life. The water does not find its way into these 

 viscera; the spasmodic closing of the glottis, prevents its getting into 

 the trachea and its branches. Yet there is found a small quantity in the 

 bronchiae, after drowning, always frothy, because air has mixed with it, 

 in the struggles which precede asphyxia. If the body remain long under 

 water, the spasmodic state of the glottis ceases, water passes into the 

 trachea, and fills the lungs*. The anatomical examination of a drowned 

 body, shows the lungs collapsed, and in the state of expiration 5 the right 

 cavities of the heart, the venous trunks which terminate in them, and ge- 

 nerally, all the veins, are gorged with bloodf, whilst the left cavities and 

 the arteries are almost entirely empty. Life ceases in this kind of as- 

 phyxia, because the heart has sent to the different organs, and especially 

 to the lungs, no blood that is not deficient in the qualities necessary to 

 their action; and perhaps also, because the venous blood that is accu- 

 mulated in the tissues, affects them by its oppressive and deadly influence. 

 On that account, the best way of restoring the drowned to life, is to blow 

 pure air into their lungs. This is done by means of bellows adapted to 

 a canula introduced into the nostril; if a proper apparatus cannot be 

 procured, one might blow with the mouth into that of the drowned per- 

 son, or into his nostrils, by means of a tube; but air so expired, having 

 already undergone the process of respiration, contains a much smaller 

 quantity of oxygen, and is much less fitted to excite the action of the 

 heart. There remain several other less efficacious remedies, such as 

 friction, bronchotomy glysters, fumigations and suppositories, stimu- 

 lating errhines, and especially ammonia. Stimulants taken into the 

 mouth and stomach, the application of fire, bleeding, the bath, electrici- 

 ty, and galvanism. 



The redness and lividity of the face, in persons who are hanged, had 

 led to the opinion that death, in such cases, was from apoplexy $ but it 

 appears that in the asphyxia from strangulation, as in that from drowning 

 death is caused by the interception of the air. To prove this, Gregory 

 performed the following experiment : he opened the trachea of a dog, 



* The lungs from their Articular functions, are the organs which receive the -first 

 impressions ifcm a multitude of deleterious agents. The nerves supplying the lungs 

 being very extensively and intimately connected with those going to several organs of 

 sense, digestion, and assimilation, whicfc speedily suffer by sympathy with the part 

 originally injured, are frequently the least attended to when we are forming an opnion 

 as to the part first'operated on by the pgisoju We see this particularly exemplified in 

 jtliasma.tic fevers, in measles and small-pox, which have ensued from mere exposure te 

 infecteJVr ; and, indeed, in all diseases communicated through the atmosphere. 

 Though the inhalation of impure air is confessedly the only mode in which such affec- 

 tions are produced, the first signs of disorder are so generally observed in the vascular 

 or digestive system, as to induce an entire forgetfulness of the great respiratory appa- 

 ratus which was first disarranged. Godman. 



| Hence the dark and livid colour of the skin and conjunctiva. This last membrane 

 is frequently injected with dark blood ; the very delicate veins of the brain are consi- 

 derably diluted, and this viscus is distended with venous blood Copland. 



