A GHASTLY STORY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3788, 28 May 1885, Page 3

A GHASTLY STORY.

In the course of a lecture delivered recently at Henley-on-Thames, the lecturer, in referring to the effect of alcohol upon the human body, cited a case mentioned by* Sir Wm. Gull in his evidence before tho Select Committee of the House of Lords, on “Intemperance.”' A cooper employed at the Henley brewery wrote to the medical superintendent of Guy’s Hospital,asking if the case mentioned was really a fact, and received a post-card in reply saying that it was ‘ a hoax —a practical impossibility.” Mr Skinner thereupon wrote to Sir William Gull, who sent him a copy of the following letter, which he had addressed to the editor of the “Medical Times and Gazette”: —“74 Brook street, W., March 30,1885. _ Sir, —ln my evidence before the Committee of the House of Lords of Intemperance,! referred to the following case. I should not have thought it necessary to trouble you on the matter, but it seems to have become a subject of dispute on platforms —one gentleman even asserting that it was a hoax, a practical impossibility, whatever these two latter words may mean, ‘ There are certain things’ says St. Augustine, ‘ which we must kaow first in order to believe them,’ When I was resident physician at Guy’s, a drayman of intemperate habits was admitted by me into Lazarus Ward about nine o’clock in the evening. He was suffering under extreme difficulty of breathing, great distension of the venous system, and other symptoms of dilation and obstruction of the heart. A large, fat, bloated man, with purple face. He died within an hour or so of bis admission into the hospital. Tho following day at one o’clock, the weather being cool, the body was placed upon the table for a post mortsm examination. There were no signs of ordinary decomposition, snch ss would account for the remarkable distended condition of the whole body. The skin and parts beneath were, throughout, distended with gas. In the absence of eigns of decom* position, and from the shortness of the time since death, it was suspected that this gas must have been exhaled from the blood, and was of no ordinary septic character. When punctures were made into the skin, and a lighted match applied, the gas which escaped burnt with the ordinary flamo of carburetted j hydrogem So many as a dozen of these small flames were burning at the same time over the distended body.”