Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-10-10
DEATH BY ELECTRICITY.
Doctors Say It Acts Like Hanging
 or Drowning.
Men Killed by Electric Wires Have, Ac- cording to Reliable Authority, Thin and Dark Blood and Congested
 Lungs-The Mazza Case.


 The physicians attached to the coroner's office are paying great attention in their autopsles to the causes of death by elec- trlcity. The last death was that of Joseph Mazza, the Italian fruit seller, of 222 Chrys- tie street, who fell against Brush electric light wire while on an awning at Chrystie end Houston streets. Mazza was thirty three years of age and was perfectly healthy. Coroner Schultze, Dr. w. T. Jenkins, Dr. Albert. T. Weston and Dr. OHare made an autopsy twenty hours after death. The wire deeply burned his face and the right side of his neck, his right hand, his left arm and his right foot. Dr. Jenkins described the con- dition of the organs to a New York Sun re- porter as follows:
 ''There was general hyperemia of all the organs. The heart was of normal size and was not rupturcd. There was no organic disease. There were on the heart isolated spots the size of pins heads scattered over the surface, more marked at the apex, where they formed an aggregation probably of forty in number. The right auricle was distended with fluid blood, as well as the right ventricle. There was less blood in the left aurlcle and ventricle. The blood was not in clots as is usual. The right lung was marked by similar isolated spots where slight hem- orrhages had taken place, but they were few in number and were scattered. The left lung was in a similar condition. There was no organic disease of either lung. In the liver, spleen, kidneys and stomach there was hypermia and no sign of disease.
 "All the small blood vessels in the brain were distended, and there was one isolated spot of congestion an inch in length and a quarter of an inch wide on the left temporal lobe. The same general condition as in the braln was observed in the cerebellum and medulla oblongata. The most singular thing observed was that there was no tend ency to coagulation. Death was due to shock.
 "I have made more autopsies in cases of death from an electric shock than any other physician attached to the coroner's office, and my general conclusions are that, as re- gards the effect on the body, the direct course of the current can be traced in some instances, and in others not, and also that in all cases observed the result is similar to that which is found in cases of asphyxia, ( c., cases of drowning, of hanging, where the person was strangled to death or of chol1- ing to death, etc. It is interesting to note that, although lightning is identical with electricity, in many cases of persons that
 
 heart or the brain has been ruptured, while in cases of death by the electric current no such phenomena has ever been found"
 One of the coroner's physicians said: "All autopsies on cases of death by elec- tricity show certain peculiar conditions The most prominent fact noticed is the ex- treme fuidlty of the blood and its dark color. Another phenomenon is the minute hemorrhages in the serous membranes, par ticularly in those of the lungs. Congestion of the lungs is always present in cases of death by electricity. As to the nature of the burns on the flesh by contact with the electric wire, there is always a bluish or violetfinge reaching out from the burns.
 ''So far as the internal injuries are con- cerned, we find the same condition of the body in death by electricity that we do in death from other diseases, notably in ty- phoid fever, septic9mia and infectious dis eases, as well as from sunstroke and asphyxia. In many kinds of poisoning cases the same phenomena are observed in making an autopsy. So that without the external wounds to indicate that the man had come in contact with an electric wire, it would be impossible to decide what was the cause of death. I believe that the theory that the electric current passes along the nerves IS untenable, as we know that the sheaves of the nerves are non-conducs- ors. The nervous force carried within the sheaves is of the nature of electricity, and the sheaves are designed by nature to con- serve and transmit the nervous forces. As it Is difficult for the nervous force to escape from the sheathing, so is it difficult for the electricity that is sent through the body to penetrate the sheathing from the outside.
 "1t Is a well-known law in electricity that 1t seeks to travel in the line of the ~s~%o 1,,s1 large percentage of the human body, and as fluid is Q good conductor, electricity would naturally travel in the line of the fluids. Blood vessels ramify minutely through every portion of the body, and it is no stretch of reasoning to suppose that the electric current first passes through the blood and disorganizes and disintegrates it, and where the shock was not sufficient to produce death we would -obably find, if we could examine person who had such an electric shock, that the organs of the body which were most vascular, or SUD- phed with blood, would be most congested The assumption might also reasonably be taken, outside of the case of general shock causing death, that the nerve cells in contact with the capillary vessels.would re- ceive tho first injury and the larger nerves and the brain the last injury.
 ''This would occur where the power of resistance to the electric shock would be sufficient to retain life in the individual A step further and we might assume that a person could be conscious of shock. How ever, we are not prepared to affirm this positively. Only recently has it been possible to mako thorough investigations in cases of death by electricity. In a short time, from the number of deaths by cleo tricity that are happening, we will learn through pathology the correct theory of the manner of death. It will be possible, also, to obtain valuable testimony from those who have suffered shock and have sur vived. From all that I can learn, an al- most fatal shock is accompanied by great difficulty in breathing, indicating moro or less congestion of the lungs. and that ac- cords with my theory that the electric cur rent runs along the blood channels and not through the nerves"
 Tho Lubricator of Society.