Morning journal and courier., 1883-10-06
Frightened to Death.

The Shock Which Ends Life with a groA-
 Heart.
 From the British Medical Journal
 The serious effects of shock to the nervous system, especially by fright, are constantly witnessed the results being most commonly syncope and convulsions. Death itself is, fortunately, comparatively rare. It is report ed in the newspapers to have occurred at Brockley on March 21, in the case Of a girl, aged IS, who was frightened to death by 8 man dressed as ghost, near the Deptford cemetery. The pathology of emotional death is of great interest, and varies in differ ent cases. In some instances fatal issue results from sanguineous apoplexy; in others, and much more frequently, from shock to the heart. Examples of the former are re- corded by Dr. D. Hack Tuke, in his ''Epau- ence of the mind upon the body" Thus, a woman at Bradford received fright from 8 man throwing stone against her window. He had previously threatened her. She soon afterwards complained of numbness, and rapidly became insensible. There WAS right hemipIeeia She died in seven hours and on post-mortem examination elot of blood was found in the left lateral ventricle. The cerebral vessels appeared to be healthy. In the we'll known example of death from the heart which occurred in John Hunters own case, we have an illustration of the cardiac class. The organ was extensively diseased, Sus Other instances of death from emotion, in which the stress hsd evidently fallen on the heart, and not upon the brain, are recorded in the collection of cases of death from pow erfuI emotion to which we have referred.
 In some cases, however, there was no evi- dence of disease of the heart or of any organ of the body, as might, indeed, be expected. For instance, man is reported to have died at Twickenham after witnessing the death of & neighbor. He made the remark: t'I have never seen anyone dead before, and hope I never shall again. There was a post-Inor- tenn examination made by pr. Ward, but nothing was found to account for death i; both ventricles of the heart contained only 8 little fluid blood, the organ itself being nor nal in size and healthy. There is no reason to doubt that in such instances, fatal syncope heart being inhibited, whether by direct ex- citation of the vagus, as maintained by Brown. Sequard, or of the accelerators of the heart in the first instance, followed by exhaustion and the unantagon- ized play of the former. Anyway, if the heart, as in Hunters case, be strongly con- tracted on it's contents, and the blood ex- pelled, one efficient cause or syncope with fatal results is present. Probably this was the pathological explanation of this unfortu- nate girls death, from the silly practical joke played upon her. She arrived homo after her fright in the road by the Dsptford ceme- tery, at Brockley, looking very i'll and ex- cited. She is said to have taken of her waterproof, drawn chair to the table to take supper then fallen forward with her head on tho table, and died after short struggle Mr. Hollis the medical man who was called in, made a post t-moTtem examination, and eported that all the organs were healthy, but that the state of the heart, combined with the fright, would account for death.