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Abstract
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The rarity of injury occasioned by the passage of strong electric currents through the body, and the silence of the standard text-books on surgery regarding this class of injuries, shall be my excuse for presenting what would otherwise seem to be a case of little interest. With the widening of the application of electric currents in the mechanical arts, and electric lighting, must come an increase in the number of these accidents, and a corresponding interest in their surgical and medico- legal relations. I do not remember to have seen a single case reported in which an injury of this kind has been made the subject of a legal inquiry, but, with the increased exposure to violence of this kind, it must soon be recognized, and we shall doubtless shortly have a special department of "electric surgery," similar in many respects to the "railroad surgery" of today...
...It was after the patient left the hospital that I obtained full particulars of the manner in which the accident occurred. He was engaged in adjusting one of the arc lights of a thirty- light circuit of the Van De Peele system. At the time he was standing on a step-ladder a few feet above the sidewalk, his foot slipped, and in attempting to save himself he grasped both of the side wires of the lamp. I?or an instant at least a portion of the current passed through his body. It is hardly conceivable that a current of this intensity could pass through the body without causing instant death, and I am of the opinion that a portion at least must have still passed through the lamp. In falling his knee came in contact with an iron railing, and the current was grounded. As he expressed it, "the fire flew from my knee to the rail." The injuries above described were directly due to the passage of the current from the leg to the rail. The chief difficulty experienced in this case was in forming an adequate idea of the extent of the injury and its probable outcome. One of the singular features of the case, and one which I would not a priori believe, is that a current of sufficient intensity to produce such extensive local injury could pass through the body without causing instant death. I think a report of a case was given in the British Medical Journal some three years ago, of a similar "grounding" of a current which caused instant death, and that the local injury in that case amounted to only a slight charring of the outer aspect of the little finger.
Language: en |