His hands became
numb with cold, his grasp relaxed, and he fell backward down into
the water, but was brought out alive. In another instance a
spanner fell a distance of 300 feet, knocked off a man's cap, and
broke its way through a four-inch plank. Again, another spanner
fell from a great height, actually tearing off a man's clothes,
from his waistcoat to his ankle, but leaving him uninjured. On
another occasion a staging with a number of workmen thereon gave
way. Two of the men were killed outright by striking some portion
of the work in their descent; two others fell clear of the
girders, and were rescued from the Firth little worse for their
great fall.
Resistance of Children to Injuries.--It is a remarkable fact that
young children, whose bones, cartilages, and tissues are
remarkably elastic, are sometimes able to sustain the passage
over their bodies of vehicles of great weight without apparent
injury. There is a record early in this century of a child of
five who was run over across the epigastrium by a heavy
two-wheeled cart, but recovered without any bad symptoms. The
treatment in this case is quite interesting, and was as follows:
venesection to faintness, castor oil in infusion of senna until
there was a free evacuation of the bowels, 12 leeches to the
abdomen and spine, and a saline mixture every two hours! Such
depleting therapeutics would in themselves seem almost sufficient
to provoke a fatal issue, and were given in good faith as the
means of effecting a recovery in such a case.
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