HICCOUGHING PROVES FATAL

Evening Star, Issue 20672, 20 December 1930, Page 29

HICCOUGHING PROVES FATAL

[From Our Owx C'ORiißSPOxniiXT.] SAN FRANCISCO, November 20. The best minds of the medical profession ami the volunteer aid ot hundreds of persons who offered homo remedies fajlcd to save "Virginia Mao Coppins, ninoteen-.vear-old schoolgirl, who died in Mount Clements. Michigan, from hiccoughs, after more than a year of suffering from the malady. In September, 1929, she was seized with her first attack while in a Detroit hospital for an operation. The malady apparently was chocked after fifty-two days of almost constant hiccoughing. During one of her attacks in succeeding months she was visited by thousands of physicians who were in Detroit to attend ‘the National Convention of Wio American Medical Association. Her case was studied by no fewer than 5,000 medical men. In September last an attack began which lasted a fortnight, and the attack which lias now brought death began a week previously. During her final fight against the baffling malady her temperature reached 107, with a, pulse of 120 and respiration of -10. The hiccoughing was caused by a spasmodic contraction of the diaphragm brought about by the peculiar reaction of a nerve. Physicians believed that an operation might have produced relief, but did not perform one because of the girl’s generally delicate health and a weak heart, which induced inflammation of the brain. During the girl’s illness her parents received* hundreds of telegrams and letters from persons wlvo offered “sure cures,” ranging from sudden fright to liberal dosage of snuff, salt, sugar, and raw clay. Ono man went in a taxicab from far-away Cleveland to her home in East Detroit with a, patent medicine ho was certain would cure her, but all to no avail.