EXTRAORDINARY DEATH OF A BOY

Western Star, Issue 1540, 28 February 1891, Page 1 (Supplement)

EXTRAORDINARY DEATH OF A BOY

THE DANGERS OF ICED WATER. Medical men in Kimberley have been much exercised over the case of a boy named Fred Dumphrey, who died there in July of a peculiar disease. The boy is described as having been famous among his companions for his acrobatic feats, and was playing with his chums all day long near his father’s store. The thermometer registered 102 degrees, and the boy ran into the store every few minutes and liberally gulped down cup after cup of ice water. He was frequently warned away, but kept on drinking until late in tbe afternoon. Suddenly blood trickled from the tip of the nose, from his gums, and from the inside of his cheeks. Within five hours several spots appeared under the skin in different parts of his body. Physicians wore called, but were unable to under stand the exact nature of the boy’s sickness. In twenty-four hours the entire body was covered with dark spots under the skin, some of Hem as large as one’s hand. Between the big spots were similar ones, which ranged in size from a sixpenny piece to a halfa crown, and all containing clotted blood, which soon began to ow through the pores of the skin. Tbe next night the boy was a mass of blood, the flow not stopping for a moment. The spots on the body at first had a peculiar bluish red appearance, turning later Jon to a greenish tinge. Just before death, the colour of the spots had changed to a deep orange. A council of physicians was held and every sort of the theoretic treatment exhausted. Every blood vessel in the child’s body seemed to burst, with the skin pores spouting like miniature springs. The flux remained unchecked until the boy died on Monday morning of pure weakness. Throughout his strange illness the boy had suffered no pain. The local physicians finally pronounced the case to be one of purpura hemorrhagica. Their report of tbe case will be soon forthcoming, and will cause something of a sensation in medical circles. The . water the boy had drunk in such quantities apparently had cause

convulsion of the body’s capillary tissues violent enough to rupture them.—Standard and Diggers’ News.