466 



NATURE 



[July 3, 19 r 



DEATH BY ELECTRIC CURRENTS AND BY 



LIGHTNING. 1 



Death by Electric Currents. 



T BELIEVE that no loss of human life from indus- 

 trial currents of electricity occurred before 1879, 

 though currents strong enough to have caused death 

 were employed in lighting the operatic stage in Paris 

 (at the first p^formance of Meyerbeer's " Le 

 Prophete") so lon fe ago as 1849, and in lighthouses 

 on and off the coast of England in 1857. In 1879 a 

 stage carpenter was killed at Lyons by the alternating 

 current of a Siemens dynamo that was giving a 

 voltage of about 250 volts at the time. The man 

 became insensible at once, and died in twenty minutes ; 

 artificial respiration was not applied. The first death 

 in this country took place at a theatre in Aston, out- 

 side Birmingham, in 1880, where a bandsman short- 

 circuited a powerful electric battery, became insensible 

 and died in forty minutes. Since that date the annual 

 number of deaths from electric shock has steadily 

 increased, particularly during this century, in which 

 the industrial employment of electricity has extended 

 so widely, and is now quite large. In the ten years 

 1901-10 the Registrar-General's returns show a "total 

 of 183 such deaths in England and Wales, the popula- 

 tion having risen from 32^ to 36 million during that 

 period. In the three years 1901 to 1903 there 

 were twenty-five deaths; in 1908, twenty-five; 

 in 1909, twenty-nine; in 1910, twentv-six. Only 

 two of these 183 victims were females, because 

 women are so much less exposed to contact with 

 dangerous electric currents than are men. Many 

 deaths by electricity occur annually on the Continent, 

 though I can only bring forward a few scattered 

 figures to prove it. In Germany, thirty-three were 

 killed in 1908; fifty-two in 1909; forty-six in 191 1. 

 In Austria eleven were killed by electricity in 1907; 

 ten in rqio; ten in 1911. In Switzerland, twenty- 

 one were killed in 1905; nineteen in 1906. I 

 think it probable that about 200 persons are killed by 

 electricity annually over the whole of Europe. As 

 regards the United States of America, where elec- 

 tricity is so very extensively employed, I have not been 

 able to find any statistical records. So long ago as 

 1888 Brown estimated that during the past five years 

 some 200 people had been killed by handling live 

 electric wires. One must remember 'that in America 

 life is held very cheap, and that safeguards and pro- 

 tective legislation tend to be regarded as undue re- 

 strictions upon industry and commerce. I imagine 

 that not fewer than 200 persons are accidentally killed 

 by electric currents every year in America.' As a 

 rule, onlv a single person is killed by electricity in 

 any single accident; but in an accident occurring in 

 1909 at Olginate, a village in Lombardy, ten people 

 were killed outright by a three-phase current at 3000 

 volts, one was saved by artificial respiration, and 

 about a dozen more were severely injured (Hoest). 



The interest of men of science, of physicians and 

 pathologists, in such deaths was first shown in France. 

 In 1882 the celebrated French medico-legal expert and 

 pathologist, Brouardel, made a careful post-mortem 

 examination of a man killed in Paris at the Tuileries 

 by a 250-volt alternating current, and he decided that 

 death was fulminating, due to the electric discharge, 

 and directly caused by arrest of the heart. Bourrot 

 at the same time examined a second and similar case 

 post mortem and came to the conclusion that death 

 was clue to violent excitation of the vastus nerve and 

 consequent arrest of the heart, with the result that 

 the heart could not resume its functions, and death 

 by asphyxia followed. In 1883 a man killed instan- 



1 From the Ooulstonian lectures for 1913. delivered before the Royal 

 College of Physicians of London by Dr. A. T. Jex-Blake. 



NO. 2 2 79, VOL. 91] 



taneously by electric shock at the Health Exhibition 

 in London was examined forty hours after death bv 

 Sheild and Delepine. Rigor mortis was marked"; 

 extreme fluidity of the blood was observed, even the 

 right heart being free from clots. The authors came 

 to the conclusion that "No doubt the vital spots at 

 the base of the brain are in such cases markedly 

 implicated." 



During the last twenty years a great many post- 

 mortem examinations have been made in cases of 

 sudden death by electric shock. Burns of greater or 

 less superficial extent are generally seen at the points 

 where the electric current has entered and left the 

 body. In the second place, abnormal fluidity of the 

 blood has often been found post mortem ; in this 

 those cases of sudden death by electric shock resemble 

 cases of sudden death by asphyxia. In the third 

 place, no pathological changes are regularly found in 

 the heart muscle, although there are good reasons for 

 believing that in most instances death is directly due 

 to paralysis of the heart. In the -fourth place, the 

 central nervous system often shows neither macro- 

 scopical nor microscopical changes of importance 

 except in the cases where relatively large quantities 

 of electricity have passed through "the body for long 

 periods of time. In a word, the post-mortem evidence 

 as to the cause of death by electric currents in indus- 

 trial accidents is generally negative, but may suggest 

 asphyxia in some cases, in others organic vascular 

 and nervous lesions in the brain and cord. 



It is upon the evidence obtained by the experimental 

 electrocution of animals that most of our knowledge 

 as to the modes of death by electric shock rests. No 

 electrical apparatus capable of producing currents 

 strong enough to kill animals was invented before 

 about the middle of the eighteenth century. At that 

 time electricity suddenly developed into a popular and 

 spectacular science in France and Germany, just as 

 m the middle of the nineteenth century table-turning, 

 spiritualism, and clairvoyance were popularly taken 

 up all over England and America with the greatest 

 energy. In neither case was much real scientific pro- 

 gress made by this arousal of popular interest; birds, 

 beetles, and other living creatures were electrocuted 

 by fnctional electricity by Gordon (i 74S ), Gralath 

 (17.40), Nollet (1740), and many others (Benjamin). 

 It was noted that the birds exhibited ecchvmoses 

 where the electric sparks struck them, much like the 

 ecchymoses seen on persons killed by lightning 

 (Nollet). Priestley in 1767 killed kittens and dogs 

 with the discharges of condensers, and tried without 

 success to resuscitate a kitten bv artificial respiration 

 distending the lungs by blowing" with a quill into the 

 trachea. _ Abildgnard (1775), using condensers and 

 Leyden jars, tried without success to electrocute a 

 three-months-old foal; he succeeded in killing cocks 

 and hens by electric discharges sent through the 

 head and made the important observation that fow's 

 treated in this way and to all appearances dead could 

 be broueht back to life by electric shocks sent through 

 I he body from breast to back, but remained dead" if 

 not treated in this manner. To mention only a few 

 out of many of those who have since made" similar 

 investigations : — 



In 1885 Mann made some verv interesting experi- 

 ments on the effects of electricity' on the action of the 

 human heart. He applied the electrodes to the 

 pra?cordia and back, and found that a slow'v alternat- 

 ing current of from t; to 30 milliamperes did not pre- 

 judice the heart's action. 



_ In 1883, and further in 1887, d'Arsonval made some 

 interesting remarks on deaths caused by industrial 

 electric currents, advancing the views as to their mode 

 of production that he has continued to hold faithfully 



