TWO INQUESTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27580, 23 December 1950, Page 9

TWO INQUESTS

Coroner’s Verdict

Verdicts in accordance with the medical evidence were returned by Mg J. D. Willis, S.M., sitting as coroner yesterday in two cases concerning the death of a child under an anaesthetic and the death of a young man after a shooting accident. The coroner found that Raymond Mason, of 27 Nelson street, Dunedin, died as a result of a bullet wound in his head, the result of an accident. Evidence was given by Dr H. D. W. Black, resident surgical officer at the Dunedin Public Hospital, and Robert Davidson Gibbon and Arnold Irwin French, the two companions who were with Mason at the time of the accident. Death of Child An inquest was concluded into the death of Robert Lloyd Drysdale, aged two years and five months, of 24 Victoria road, St. Kilda, who died in the Dunedin Public Hospital on November 24 during a plastic operation. Dr F. B. M. Woodhouse said he had examined the child before and after the operation. On three visits to the ward witness found definite evidence of damage to the nervous system with progressive weakening of the breathing mechanism. The fatality was a risk always present in the administration of chemical agents to produce unconsciousness, he said, and in f this case the anaesthetic had proved ‘ too much for the child. The coroner found in accordance with the medica; evidence.