BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE BY ELECTRICITY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1153, 27 September 1883, Page 3

BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE BY ELECTRICITY.

Dr Abrath says that on arriving on the scene of the calamity (the Sunderland disaster) about an hour after its occurrence ho found a child named Ada Smith, whose parents resisded at Northumberland Street, lying in Dr Potts’s snrgery. A sister was amongst the dead. As speedily as possible he had the child moved to the Hospital for Foreign Seamen, and by means of electricty succeeded in sustaining animation. This, we hear is the only case in which electricity was called into requisition. This morning Miss Smith was in a fair way of recovery. Dr Abrath has also another little patient —Alice Jane Kogans, of Fitters Row—who is suffering from concussion of the brain. She also is recovering. He asserts that where death resulted from suffocation the early application of electricity would have been very valuable. In connection with the treatment of the injured after ;the accident, Dr Abrath has made a statement in which he highly recommends the use of electricity in cases of suffocation. With regard to the particular instance with which he was connected he says —‘ Hearing there was a little girl lying in Dr Potts’s surgery I made my way there, and found Ada Smith in a dying state, suffocation: The heart’s action was failing rapidly, so that death might have ensued in a few minutes. I at once ordered a bystander to run for an| electric machine, and he got one at a chemist’s shop close at hand, and if I ever saw a case in which electricity saved life it was in this one. 1 applied the electricity at once upon receiving the machine. While it was being sent for I used artificial respiration. It is a wellknown fact that in cases of suffocation the first thing that should be done is to induce artificial respiration by Sylvester’s method, and then I would advise the use of electricity. My opinion is that if there had been electric appliances in the hall, many children who were apparently dead might have been saved. Life is often saved, as anyone knows who is experienced in cases of partial drowning or suffocation, by using, artificial respiration anfl electricity. In the Victoria Hall disaster the death by suffocation must have been very lingering, as the air was not entirely cut off, there being an access from the top.’ The Doctor then strongly recommends that in all public buildings and in such places as swimming baths, there should be a number of electric machines for use in anv catastrophe such as the fearful one of Sunderland.