A handy-book of forensic medicine and toxicology / by W. Bathurst Woodman and Charles Meymott Tidy.

Date:
1877
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A handy-book of forensic medicine and toxicology / by W. Bathurst Woodman and Charles Meymott Tidy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    1188/1268 (page 1152)
    blows in the epigastrium are especially so. A kick here, or a blow from running against a post, or projecting shaft, Ac., has often proved fatal, and sometimes suddenly or instantaneously so. It is supposed that the solar plexus or semi-lunar ganglion of the sympathetic is injured in these cases. But other portions of the abdomen have proved equally dangerous when bruised. Such injuries are common in prize-fights, and stand-up fights, pot-house brawls, &c. [See Taylor, pp. 645-6, Watson on Homi- cide, p. 75, &c., and the works of Travers, Cooper, &c., “Surgical Dictionary ” and Alison; also Beck and Guy, ad rem.] In Rex v. Jones, Warwick Summer Assizes, 1831, a case of alleged manslaughter, the prisoner was charged with having struck deceased several blows on the breast, and one on the pit of the stomach by which he instantly fell down senseless and expired. On dissection no morbid appearances were found. The prisoner was convicted. So in Regina v. Sayers, C. C. Court, August 1841, a man received a blow in the stomach, and fell dead. The jury thought he must have had apoplexy, and acquitted the prisoner! See also Regina v. Laws, Norwich Lent Assizes, 1854. In these and other cases, the juries seemed to expect that there should be some visible cause of death. But we know that people have expired from simply hearing bad news, and a blow on any portion of the sympathetic nervous system is probably enough to cause death if sudden and severe. Such blows may however, and often do, cause peritonitis. In these cases death is less rapid, requiring some hours, and generally a few days to be fatal. Watson records numerous cases in his treatise on “ Homicide.” Several cases are quoted by Taylor [pp. 646-7], See Regina v. Martin, C. C. Court, 1839; Reg. v. Smith, Manchester Lent Assizes, 1871, and numerous cases in the medical journals of the last thirty years. Sometimes this peritonitis is accompanied by pleurisy. At the time when the first case of the kind was noticed, the communication by means of lymphatics of the diaphragm between the thoracic and abdominal cavities, now generally admitted by anatomists, was unknown. Though usually very fatal, some cases of traumatic peritonitis recover. Some years ago in France, a young woman fell from a rick on to a hay- knife, which penetrated her vagina, and forced its way into the abdomen. Although she had frightful haemorrhage, she quite recovered. Injuries to the abdomen may cause rupture of the solid viscera. Thus the liver, spleen, and kidneys may be ruptured without auy external wound or even signs of bruising. A case of this kind, in which the right kidney was torn across, was seen by one of the Authors, and Dr. Ffnch of St. Mary Church in 1864.' See p. 1074. Mr. Carter, now of Chelmsford, when house surgeon to the London Hospital, admitted a boy whose liver was ruptured by a waggon wheel going over his abdo- men. There were no marks of external injury. Soon after a man who had been kicked in the belly was admitted into the same hospital, and his spleen was ruptured.* The Authors have seeu several such cases in which the liver was thus torn as it were almost in half—one or two others of injuries to the spleen and kidne^ Dr. Taylor gives a number * About a year ago, a Coolie in Ceylon was impertinent, and the plantation superintendent treated him violently—kicking him, &c. He died almost nnme- diately from rupture of the spleen. This organ was large and soft. He had had fever a little while before. The abdomen was full of blood. It was attempted to be proved, for the defence, that it was not uncommon for the spleen to rupture