SAVED BY ANTIDOTE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 234, 3 October 1932, Page 7

SAVED BY ANTIDOTE.

MAN WHO DRANK POISON. • FORMER MEDICAID STUDENT. SENSATIONS DESCRIBED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, September 13. One of the most remarkable antidotes for a deadly poison has just been discovered in San Francisco, chiefly through the protracted experiments of Professor Percy Baumberger, of Stanford University, in conjunction with the professor of pharmacy, Dr. P. J. Hanzlik, and Dr. C. D. Leake, who holds a similar position at the University of California. Cuthbert Rieveley, aged 30, of Modesto, California, a former medical student at the University of Chicago, believed' to be the only man known to modern science to swallow potassium cyanide poison and live,' recovered rapidly at the San Francisco Hospital. Unconscious and near death, after he had swallowed the poison because of inability to obtain work, he was brought back to life by an injection of methylene blue, a coal tar dye. And one of the originators of the antidote was his former professor at the Chicago University, Dr. J. C. Geiger, now city health officer in San Francisco. Rieveley was the first to receive the treatment through injection of the fluid into his veins.

Had Rieveley swallowed the poison in crystal form 'instead of dissolving 15 grains in water, death would have been almost instantaneous, surgeons said. "After I swallowed the solution there was no immediate sensation," Rieveley told Dr. Geiger. "Then there came a numbness starting at the extremities and spreading gradually. I felt no pain. In fact, the sensation was really pleasant, with no pain, no muscular rigidity in 'going under.' Gradually I grew numb all over— grew hazy, and it -was all very much like an' anaesthetic. After the injection I started to 'wake u'p' with a sensation of floating. -1 heard voices dimly, but grew rapidly stronger, although there was a chilly sensation throughout my body. I feel fine now and am glad to be alive." Use of the methylene blue resulted from the- deaths of three men who had drunk a solution of cyanide in mistake for liquor.