DANGER IN LITTLE THINGS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2170, 26 September 1895, Page 45

DANGER IN LITTLE THINGS.

Wiio would say it was risky to laugh ? Jhit Abraham M'.rando, a Spitalttelda pickle merchant;, heard a fanny story whioh amused him so much that he laughed until he oould not stop, and died of suffocation. Literally, he died of laughing. Then Harold Stepping, a child, was taking the air in his nurse's arms at Norwood. Nothing unsafe, apparently, in breathing freah air ; bat a gu»t of wind suddenly " took his breath away," and the little one gasped and ohoked and grew black in the face and died. I Brunei, tho engineer, was playing with a friend's children. He was pretending to pass a half-sovereign iDto bis mouth and out of his ear. Simple enough this seems to be, but the famous broad-gauge ohampion made a mistake ; the ooin slipped, passed into his throat, and lodged in the trachea. Tho accident was a serious one, for the ordinary methods of extraction failed, and at last the sufferer's body was inverted, his physician* direoting him to stand on bis head, so that the natural attompt to dislodge tbo obstruction by ooughing might b« helped by the weight of the coin. The first trial of this ourious experiment did no good, but at the next attempt the coin dropped out, and the trouble was over. More serious was the result of a man's attempt to show that he oould put a tyßiard ball in his mouth. He did too muob, for ho allowed it to go so far back in his throat that it choked him. There is, of ooarse, some reason to apprehend danger from the pastry of oommeros and of the young housewife ; and the hofcoross bun is almost as deadly as the mince pie and the plum pudding. No one will be surprised, therefore, to hear that a young woman who ate 12 hot-cross buns a few yean, ago at Kilbum did not survive more than ( few hours. Corks are not necessarily injurious, but a child from Lee ate some of them, and they created bo much internal disturbance that Bbc died in Guy's Hospital. One may even be overwhelmed with affßc« tion— literally killed by kindness. In Birmingham a seven-weeks-old baby was being nursed by a girl whose affectionate trans< ports induced her to hug the infant incei< santly. In her zeal she overdid her love, for she suffocated the baby— fondled it to death. 11 It'« only a scratch I " Is a very common phrase on the lips of a man who makes light of some trifling injury. But even scratches are serious sometimes. A clerk in Liverpool, working among som« imported hides, was irritated by a pimple on bis neok, and scratched it till it bled. Somi matter from the hides poisoned this ar* parently trumpery wound, and the man died, of blood-poisoniDg. So did an ItJlngton man whose foot was pricked by a nail in his shoe ; so did a Croydon man who pricked his knee slightly with the point of a pair of scissors which he was using to cut hi« nails. It is apparently safe enough to sit on a barrel smoking. But a Liverpool lad who smoked his pipe while sitting on a barrel on a dray was suddenly thrown Into the atr t . and then to the pavement, where ha was

badly hurt. It was pot a powder barrel, bnfc it had contained methylated spirits, and the vepour exploded. On the other hand, men who wrestle with bears may not expect to come off scathless, "on the Yaiikce principle that you should never monkey with the hind shoe of a mule. A man who undertook to wrestle with a bear for a prizo at an East London mu6ic hall was fatally injured. False teeth are invaluable to those who bave no others, and sometime* dangerous also. A woman who was sitting in an excursion train near Manchester swallowed her fake teeth, and she died after they bad been removed. A Chicago painter who came to England died because be had a bad memory. He thought ho was riding in tbe corridor trains of his own land, and he opened the carriage :<3oor in the night and stepped on to the line. Too much of a good thing may be fatal. A sergeant of the Hampshire Rcgiuiout had some cough lozenges to cure a cold, and he took a lot, thinking the more h8 swallowed ,the more good they would do him. Bat they contained opium, and he had swallowed a fatal dose. , No one would expect to die of hiccoughs, |>ut a man named Carberry, in NBW York, j«3id so die. He was being shaved when the fhiccoogha bf gan, and he laughed at the interference with the operation. But-it was mo laughirg matter; and Oarberry had to give up his work because the hiccoughs became incessant, and after half a dozen doctor* iad despaired of the case as one utterly [beyond their experience, it was decided to 'operate ou the inferior maxillary nerve. Even then the troubls did cot cease, and jßfter 13 weeks of constant hiocoughiDg Carberry died of exhaustion. Such incidents as these show the truth of the advice that we should " think naught a trifle, though it small appear."