Treatise on Poisons by Sir Robert Christison
5. The next accident which may be noticed on account of its being liable
854 words | Chapter 52
to be mistaken for the effects of poison is _sudden death from drinking
cold water_.
In Britain the most common form of death from this cause appears to have
been instant death, arising from the impression on the stomach. It is
not an uncommon thing for people to drop down instantaneously and die on
the spot, in consequence of drinking freely of cold water or other
fluids while over-heated.[152] There is an interesting report on a case
of this kind by Pyl in his Memoirs and Observations. The individual had
been quarrelling with a companion, and in the height of a fit of violent
passion swallowed a glass of beer; when he dropped down senseless and
motionless, and died immediately. His wife suspecting the administration
of poison, demanded a judicial inquiry; but nothing was found in the
body to account for death. Pyl therefore came to the conclusion that the
man died from the sudden impression caused by the cold beer.[153] Dr.
Currie, after quoting several instances of the like kind, relates the
following remarkable case which occurred to himself. A young man, having
just sat down, panting and bathed in sweat, after a severe match at
tennis, drank greedily from a pitcher of water fresh drawn from a
neighbouring pump. Suddenly he laid his hand on his stomach, bent
forward, became pale, breathed laboriously, and in a few minutes
expired.[154]
But when combined with exposure to a burning sun, as in hot climates,
drinking cold water when the body is over-heated seems often to excite
along with irritation in the stomach congestive apoplexy. Dr. Watts has
given a good account of these effects as they occurred in the
neighbourhood of New York during the hot season of 1818. During the
summer of that year the thermometer often stood in the shade so high as
92°; and the labourers in consequence could not be restrained from
drinking frequently and excessively of cold water. Many were attacked
with pain in the stomach, sickness, giddiness, and fainting; next with
difficult breathing, and rattling in the throat; then with apoplexy; and
not a few perished.[155] These symptoms are very like the effects of
some narcotico-acrid poisons.
Lastly, drinking cold water sometimes causes symptoms more nearly allied
to those of the pure irritants. Thus some persons, on eating ices, or
drinking iced-water, or cold ginger-beer in the hot days of summer, are
attacked with violent colic. Others in the like circumstances are
attacked with violent fits of vomiting.[156] Haller has even mentioned
an instance of a man, who after swallowing a large draught of cold water
while over-heated, was seized with symptoms of acute gastritis, and died
in fifteen days: and in the dead body the stomach was found gangrenous
and ulcerated at its fundus.[157] M. Guérard relates a similar case,
that of a quarter-master who, swallowing iced-beer after a hurried
journey in a hot day, was attacked in six hours with shivering, then
with heat and tightness in the pit of the stomach, vomiting of every
thing he took, anxiety, thirst and frequency of the pulse; next with
extreme prostration, cessation of pain, hiccup, and lividity of the
face; and he expired in five days. Signs of inflammation were found in
the stomach, such as great redness internally, with spots of
extravasation, and a blackish matter like what he vomited.[158] Cholera
has also been sometimes referred to the same cause. In the hot summer of
1825 it was remarked that a great number of persons who used to frequent
a particular coffee-house in the Palais-Royal at Paris, and the owner
among the rest, were severely affected with cholera. Poison being
suspected to be the cause, a judicial inquiry was instituted. It was
proved, however, that similar accidents had been observed at other
coffee-houses, in other cities, and likewise in former hot seasons; and
when the whole medical evidence was referred to a commission of
physicians and chemists, they gave their opinion, that the disease was
owing to the incautious use of ices and iced-water in an unusually hot
summer.[159] Perhaps cholera arising thus may prove fatal. The following
extraordinary case, which appears to have been of this nature, was
communicated to me by the late Dr. Duncan, junior. A bookbinder in this
city, previously in excellent health, rose one morning at six to kindle
his fire, and took a large draught of cold water from a pitcher used in
common by the whole family. He went immediately to bed again,
complaining of pain in the pit of the stomach, and extreme anxiety, and
affected with incessant vomiting. In twelve hours he died without any
material change in the symptoms, and no disease whatever could be
detected in the dead body. Dr. Duncan satisfied himself from general
circumstances, that poisoning was quite out of the question; so that,
however extraordinary it may appear, his death could be accounted for in
no other way than by ascribing it to the cold water.—Hoffmann says he
was acquainted with instances where fatal inflammatory fever was induced
by drinking too freely of cold water, and a suspicion of poisoning in
consequence excited.[160]
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