Bleeding has hitherto been almost the only refuge upon these occasions. If this did not succeed, the patient was given up. By bleeding it was proposed to give vent to the stagnating blood in the veins, in order to make way for that in the arteries el tergo, that the resistance of the heart being thus diminished, this muscle might again be put in motion.
But, in too many instances, we every day are informed that this operation will not succeed, though the operation is made with never so much skill. Nor is it likely that it should ; when the blood has lost considerably of its fluidity, the motion of the heart and the contractile force of the solids are at an end.
Chafing, rubbing, pulling, the application of stimulants are too often as ineffectual as bleeding.
The method of distending the lungs of persons dead in appear ance having been tried with such success in one instance, gives just reason to expect that it may be useful to others.
It may be a proper inquiry in what cases, and under what circumstances, there may be a prospect of applying it with success ? It will at once be granted that when the juices are corrupted ; where they and rendered unfit for circulation by diseases ; where they are exhausted ; or where the tone and texture of the solids is impaired or destroyed, it would be extreme folly to think of any expedient to recover life.
But where the solids are whole, and their tone unimpaired by diseases ; the juices not vitiated by any other cause than a short stagnation ; where there are the least remains of animal heat, it would seem wrong not to attempt so easy an experiment.
This description takes in a few diseases, but a greater number of accidents. Amongst the first are many of those which are called sudden deaths from some invisible cause ; apoplexies, fits of various kinds—as hysterics, syncopes, and many other disorders— wherein, without any obvious pre-indisposition, persons in a moment sink down and expire. In many of these cases, it might be of use to apply this method, yet without neglecting any of those other helps which are usually called in upon these melancholy occasions.
It is not easy to enumerate all the various casualties in which this method might be tried not without a prospect of success.
Some of them are the following : suffocations from sulphureous damps of mines, coal-pits, &c. ; the condensed air of long unopened wells, or other subterraneous caverns ; the noxious vapours arising from fermenting liquors received from a narrow vent ; the steam of burning charcoal ; sulphureous mineral acids ; arsenical effluvia, &c.
Perhaps those who to appearance are struck dead by lightning, or any violent agitation of the passions—as joy, fear, surprise, &c. —might frequently be recovered by this simple process of strongly blowing into the lungs, and by that means once more communi cating motion to the vital organs.
Malefactors executed at the gallows would afford opportunities of discovering how far this method might be successful in relieving such as may ,have unhappily become their own executioners by hanging themselves. It might at least be tried, if, after the criminals have hung the usual time, inflating the lungs in the manner proposed would not sometimes bring them to life. The only ill consequence that could accrue from a discovery of this kind would be easily obviated by prolonging the present allotted time of suspension.
But this method would seem to promise very much in assisting those who have been suffocated in the water under the above mentioned circumstances ; at least, it appears necessary to recom mend a trial of it, after the body has been discharged of the water admitted into it, by placing it in a proper position, the head down wards, prone, and—if it can be—across a barrel, hogshead, or some such-like convex support, with the utmost expedition.
It does not seem absurd to compare the animal machine to a clock. Let the wheels whereof be in never such good order, the mechanism complete in every part, and wound up to the full pitch, yet, without some impulse communicated to the pendulum, the whole continues motionless.
Thus, in the accidents described, the solids are supposed to be whole and elastic, the juices in sufficient quantities, their qualities not otherwise vitiated than by a short stagnation, from the quiescence of that moving something which enables matter in animated bodies to overcome the resistance of the medium it acts in.