THE LONG DEATH ROLL.

NZ Truth, Issue 217, 21 August 1909, Page 10

THE LONG DEATH ROLL.

Another Victim to an Anaesthetic. •. . ...» .■•.. . .1 . ■■ ■. The ghastly death roll of victims to whom anaesthetics have been fatally administered is on the increase, and .it is about time that the Legislature inquired exhaustively into the method of sending apparently healthy people into the next world. .One of the latest victims "is a fourteen-year-old Christchurch boy named George Edgar Wolfe, who entered the hospital to undergo a simple minor operation and went to his grave per medium of a drug whfch is said to have been m use at the institution for three years only. Wolfe was a line- healthy youth and big for his age, so big ■ that the coffin might have been constructed to hold t'hc corpse of a full-grown man, and that this bright young life should have been sacrificed because of ip.norancc of the effect of a particular drug on certain constitutions is a reflection on the science of medicine. Young WoKe had some obstruction m his nose and entered the hospital to have it removed, the operation being treated as. a light matter. The'medical report later stated that he was operated upon for adenoid growths and enlarged tonsils by Dr. .Bell, Dr. Hay administering ethyl chloride as an anaesthetic. The boy didn't talie the drug well, and Dr. Bell, noticing something wrong, resorted to artificial respiration, but Wolfe couldn't be brought round, and died from the effects of the anaesthetic. Dr. Hay examined Wolfe's heart before the operation, when it seemed to be healthy, and he attributed death to poisoning owing to the susceptibility of the boy to ethyl chloride, which had affected his heart. Dr. Duncan was also present, and Dr. Crookc rushed m when he heard that the boy was sinking. What "Truth" wants to know is, Why should it be possible m this twentieth . century for a healthy person to be killed by means ot a drug m this manner ? IS NO VALUE PLACED ON HUMAN LIFE •>. This paper has no blame for the doctors, who - follow recognised practice, but would point out that if a medical man's diploma didn't protect him from the consequences of deaths of this description, no drug could be used that by the shred of a shadow of possibility might prove fatal, and the care exercised m tbe selection and adminietration of anaesthetics would be of the most complete character. The jury returned a verdict of ethyl chloride poisoning, and added no rider, as they might have done had the. victim been of wealthy parentage and employed a solicitor to sift the evidence and call independent medical testimony. As it is, the fatality is a mere incident, and passed beyond the recollection of all excepting the youth's family, to whom the news of an undreamt-of death was a horrible shock. "When they told me my boy was dead my blocd ran ecld." said the elderly mother, piteously ; "and it hasn't warmed since, and it never will." Here was a youth, carefully reared, employed at a small wage< m a caterer's shop, who was just beginning to give some return for the care that had been lavished upon him by his parent, and he was dragged from her m this awful way. The pathos, the tragedy of it ! In the name of common humanity the (Government of this debt-ridden country is invited to act, and to act with decision.