DECEPTIVE SIGNS OF DEATH.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 11 October 1924, Page 16

DECEPTIVE SIGNS OF DEATH.

RECOVERY OF A COFFINED PATIENT. A recent continental case (says the Medical World) shows that many conditions may be wrongly taken for death. A hospital nurse, aged twen-ty-three, swallowed 25 gr. of morphia and 75 gr. of veronal in a- wood one wet October afternoon. She was discovered the next day, apparently lifeless, and was removed to the mortuary where a doctor, finding her pulseless, with no sign of respiration reaction to hot sealing-wax dropped on the skin pronounced her dead, and she was coffined in her wet clothes. The coffin being reopened fourteen hours later for identification purposes, a movement of the head was observed, and the same doctor detected heartsounds, although there was still no preemptible pulse or respiratory movement. The patient was now —1.e., forty-two hours after she had taken the poison—removed to a hospital, where apparent rigor mortis was noted, but although the • cheeks were eyanosed and the. heart was found to be acting at 30-40 per minute, there was no return of pulse or respiration. Morphia being detected on gastric lavage, active treatment was commenced, the muscular rigidity soon passing off, although- consciousness was not regained "nt ; l the next dn.v. which was the third after the suicidal attempt. ■