ACCIDENTAL, SUICIDAL, OR CRIMINAL. 809 different parts of the world, I have no personal knowledge of such injuries, and have met but two persons that had any actual personal knowledge of shark-bites. Documentary evidence as to shark-bites is also very scanty. During the last fifty years soldiers by the tens of thousands have swum at Fort Monroe, Virginia, yet there is no record of one having been bitten by a shark; nor have I been able to ascertain that any accident of the kind has occurred at Malta or at Gibraltar. There does not appear to be a record of any one ever having been bitten off the British Isles. I have been unable to ascertain that a single bite of the kind is reported among the medical records of our War or Navy Department or those of the Marine Hospital. In the West Indies but few facts are reported indicating danger from sharks, and these are not well authenticated. The same may be said as to newspaper accounts, which deserve about as much credence as the reports concerning sea-serpents. A few years ago a public journal gave an account of a boy who was bitten while swimming near New York and afterward died in a hospital. But medical literature has a few reports of shark-bites. After ten years' diligent search I have found seven references, the earliest in the London Medical Gazette, 1823, and the latest in the London Lancet, 1886. The bites occurred in Australia, South Africa, and India. The Hooghley and Ganges Rivers are the worst place in the world for sharks and alligators. A particular kind of shark, the Carcharras Gangeticus, which is very fierce and bold, sometimes dashes among the crowds at the bathing ghâts, and has been known to bite a boy in two feet of water. All persons bitten at these places generally die from the bite, for the reason that the shark, living on carrion, portions of which stick between the teeth, carries infection to those whom it may afterward bite. The former habit of throwing the dead in the river is supposed to account for the boldness of these particular sharks in attacking the human species. Self-inflicted wounds rather suggest suicide, as numerous instances attest, where one or two kinds of death were intended to make assurance doubly sure. I once saw an Eskimo stab himself and then jump overboard from a ship off the Siberian coast. But as a rule suicidal drowning is unaccompanied by traumatic lesions, unless it be those produced by falls. Hence the absence of lesions leads to the presumption that the individual while living fell into the water or other fluid accidentally or voluntarily. Exception may be made in the case of infanticide and homicidal submersion as the result of surprise, where a person taken unawares is suddenly and unexpectedly pushed or thrown into the water. A case in point is that of a man suddenly robbed and seized by three persons, who threw him into the river. Another is that of a man who, wishing to get rid of his wife, gave her arsenic. The effects of the poison being slow he induced her to take a walk along the river, and when her back was turned he pushed her rapidly off the bank into the stream, where she drowned. Death by submersion is rarely the result of murderous intent, and in the case of adults it is suddenly resorted to in order to paralyze resistance and facilitate the success of crime. Submersion is oftener intended to hide a crime. A body may be taken from the water after murder or rape. Whether the cadaver is recent or one that has lain in the water a long time, the expert is confronted with a question of the differences that he may expect to find in a body drowned and one thrown into the water after death. This difficulty can only be resolved by considering all the signs and lesions furnished by the autopsy. No single sign or post-mortem appearance is characteristic of drowning, and none enables us surely to diagnosticate death by submersion either in putrid or fresh cadavers. Nor do we have any significant infallible signs that may serve as a parallel between the immerged post mortem and the submerged. The exterior signs being nearly the same in the two, the diagnosis must necessarily depend upon assembled circumstances, and these are liable to vary. CIRCUMSTANCES THAT MAY AFFECT THE TIME OF SUBMERSION. Putrid decomposition is the chief obstacle to diagnosis in a body that has been drowned. This presents great differences. The death happening in winter or summer, in a temperate or intertropical country, and sojourn of the cadaver in salt or fresh CIRCUMSTANCES AFFECTING TIME OF SUBMERSION. 811 water, are each and all important details to be considered in studying the submergence of a body.' It is only by studying the events in this order, along with the immediate signs of death, that the duration of the submergence may be conjectured. With anatomical appearances as the only guide it is impossible to fix the time of immersion. Many elements combined may affect even the gaseous putrefaction that takes place in submerged bodies. Summer heat and shallow or stagnant water hasten the development of putrid gas and subcutaneous emphysema which bring the cadaver to the surface, and that, too, sometimes in spite of precautions taken to insure the submersion. A case in point is the body of the Italian admiral, Caraccioli, mentioned in Southey's "Life of Nelson." Bodies weighted with lead or other heavy substance for the purpose of hiding crime have also been known to float in consequence of the putrefactive phenomena. At Evansville, Ind., unsuccessful efforts were made to raise a sunken steamer with thirty head of cattle between decks. A few days after the attempt was abandoned the steamer was suddenly seen to float. The carcasses of the putrefying animals, swollen by gas, had sufficed to bring the wreck to the surface. A great development of gas is very noticeable in what is known as a blasted" whale, the stomach of which assumes balloon-like proportions. A few summers ago, at Provincetown, Mass., it was my rare fortune to be within a few feet of an enormously distended putrid whale, which suddenly exploded. In cold countries drowned bodies are longer in coming to the surface. In Russia, for instance, in spring after the rivers and lakes have thawed, the bodies of numerous victims of alcoholism and accidental drowning of the previous winter are taken from the water. Last summer, at Quebec, I was present when the body of a man drowned the winter before came to the surface of the St. Lawrence River. On a visit to the northern lakes many persons connected with the navigation of Lake Superior told me that bodies drowned in its waters seldom or never came to the surface. Specific gravity of the water itself may be an additional The subject has been well stud- l'Anthropologie Criminelle et des ied by Dr. A. Carré, Archiv. de Sciences Pénales, 15 Janv., 1892. cause for the body coming to the surface. Dr. Tidy says that every structure of the human body floats in the water of the Dead Sea. The same cannot be said about the buoyancy of the water of Great Salt Lake, the accounts of which have been greatly exaggerated. It does not "support a bather as if he were sitting in an arm-chair and float him like a fresh egg." Experience shows that there is no difficulty either in swimming or in sinking in its waters, the solid constituents of which are estimated to be about six and a half times more than that of sea-water. Analysis of Dead Sea water places the solid constituents at 24.580, while that of Salt Lake is 22.282. Another strong natural brine in the United States is said to be that of Syracuse Saline, New York, which contains 17.35 per cent of sodium chloride. It is evident from what has been stated that no positive assertion can be made as to how soon a drowned body will rise to the surface, and at best any conclusion as to the date of submersion is so unsatisfactory that it may be said to be an unscrupulous use of guessing privileges. Errors in legal medicine are sadder in their consequences than those of medical diagnosis. The medical legist would therefore do well to preserve the frame of mind that often doubts and rarely affirms, and he should be circumspect enough to avoid dogmatic assertions about matters of uncertainty. DEATH FROM STARVATION. IN ITS MEDICO-LEGAL ASPECT. BY ENOCH V. STODDARD, A.M., M.D., Emeritus Professor of Materia Medica and Hygiene in the University of Buffalo; of Medicine and of the American Academy of Medicine; Late Surgeon 65th Regt. N. Y. Vols.; Late Health Commissioner, Rochester, N. Y.; etc., etc. |