Painful Death of an Austrian Physician.

Manawatu Herald, 5 January 1897, Page 3

Painful Death of an Austrian Physician.

» A moat distressing oase has (writes the Vienna correspondent of the Daily News) caused a wing of the General Hospital to be closed for a time, and. the nurses to be kept out of contact with any one not belonging to the hospital. In the month of August a man was brought to the hospital suffering from the terrible disease called glanders, which he had taken from a horse similarly afflicted. He Boon died, and a military surgeon, JDr Bowlaski, who has spent many years examining baoillse of all kinds, undertook to subject the dead body to a close examination. Tbia was in itself a most dangerous piece of work. By the aid of the microscope, he soon succeeded in finding the bacillus, whom he reared, to watch the manner of it 3 growth and its vitality. An ambitious young physician, Dr. Hoffmaa, expressed his doubts as to whether the baciilu9 reared artificially had still in it the power of infection. Dr. Rowlaski gave him one of his families, and Dr. Hoffman soon saw that the poison still had the most deadly power. All tha animals he injected with it died of the horrible malady. At the beginning of October Dr Hoffman caught cold, and felt acute pains in his side. The pain increased, and Dr Hoffmann trUd to cure it by injecting morphia. He did this with the syringe which ,h.e had, used for injecting the glanders into the doomed animals. A 1 hough it had been disinfected in glowing heat, some particles of tbe poison must have sliil been in it. f>r Dr Hoffman grew worse every day, and last Monday bis friends took him to the hospital. His colleagir g were horrified when they saw him - the whole body being covered by trrriblo ulcers, which, when they fekwere examined, proved to be filled P^with the glanders poison. The ca?.o toiches the whole medical profession to the heart; two hundred doctors

are busying themselves with it, and ail the great professors visit the patient several times ft day. Until i the 22nd Dr Hoffman was in great pain, but he then happily lost all consciousness. He knew perfectly well what was the matter with him, and gave a cool acoount of what he bad done, and what the consequences were likely to be. Later in the night Dr Hoffmann died without regaining consciousness.