RESTORING LIFE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3144, 20 November 1922, Page 2

RESTORING LIFE.

(By a Physician.) I lie case reported in which the heart was caused to re-beat and life to be resumed one hour after death had apparently occurred, directs attention to the improvement recently achieved in our efforts to restore those who have succumbed, whether during operation or irom drowning or electric shock. . \\o have learned what a persistent inclination the heart has to heat if it is given the slightest chance, and we have learned how to give it that chance in circumstances previously considered hopeless. I„ the experimental laboratory the heart has been made to heat alter long intervals even than the hour recorded. Moreover, the heart, or even merely portions of the. heart's muscle have been enabled to go on beating for hours and for days when they have been, completely removed from ihe botlv to which they properly belonged there is, in fart, a self-starting niecltaiusjii in the hvart which can make it beat apart lro\n impulses brought along nerves, which are under normal conditions very likely Ihe usual imnetu- to the beat. ,

Ihe recovery ol a heart through massage is a dramatic even. Relaxed, the heart is a flabby, rather shapeless mass. When jt is grasped in the hand' for the act of massage,, after a lew squeezes if is ielt to harden and contract, and Irom being not unlike a collapsed haloon with thick walls it comes to be both in shape and firmness not unlike a cricket ball.

. i here i« a more delicate arbiter of ultimate success, and that is the sensitive cells, of the higher nervous system. I hesre brain cells, perhaps because they are the most recently evolved constituents of the body, a.re the most sensitive .Consequently they die more quickly than other cells, and though, for 'nstance, in the case referred 1 to above hfe was restored one l hour after death had apparently occurred, it is more than doubtful whether, had the patient survived, he would ever have been a norma] individual again. There is a danger in the very success oi cardiac massage. This danger is that doctors will fly too soon and needlessly to the remedy in certain cases when recovery can be brought about bv simpler measures without operation. It is quite true that when massage of the heart is really needed it must not be too long delayed, or it will fail. On the other hand, it must not be employed too soon. Probably live minutes' effectual effort by the simpler means known to the profession should always first be tried. In earlier days, when tracheatomy was relied on to restore life lost 'through anaesthetics many an operation of that kind was done for conditions which we now remove without tracheotomy at ail. \\c must beware of falling into the same error with regard to cardiac massage. Above all. we must so far as is possible avoid the necessity for any of these restorative measures.