The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-04-02
THE REAL FOOL KILLER.
THERE'S BEEN ALOT OF "GAssING''
ON THIS SUBJECT.

Here Are Statistics Which Show How
Many Fools Are Clicked OF by the
Fumes of Escaping Gas After They
Have Succeeded in Blowing the
Flame Out.
From rhe Ne,o York Advertiser.
The Fool Killer is, after ell. proved to be
stern reality-s sort Of throttling vam-
pire, aud not a myth, nor, as many persons
have been led TO think, a figure of speech
intended 70 illustrate how worthy of death
some sap heads are. This destroyer of
boobies is nothing but common illuminating
gas, which local students Of vital statistics
say has done more to exterminate fools than
anything they, the observers, have been
able TO discover.
Pursuing the subject deeper, those of the
students who have fondness for etomolog-
icsl research have found thai the term
Fool Killer came into general use almost
immediately after coal gas was first used
for illuminating purposes in factories in
Great Britain. From this they infer chat
80 many OF the pumpkins laboring at the
works were smothersd because of their lack
of knowledge OF the then new illuminAut
that gas became commonly known as the
Fool Killer
Therefore a good many persons must adj
nit that the appellation was most happily
chosen TO express the witlessness OF block
heads who blew out gas jets. As police-
men, ambulance and hospital doctors and
coroners have found that the number of the
Fool Killers victims seem to be on the in
crease, they reckon that human donkeYs
are multiplying in the agricultural regions
Of WaYback although it is true that about
one-tenth of those who have, within a year,
been laid out by the escape OF carbuTetted
hydrogen have but recently come from
other parts Of the world.
Prof. Walter b. Carruthers, one Of the
faculty Of Bellevue hospital, who Is widely
known among medical men on account of
his extraordinary familiarity with com
plants Of the organs Of respiration, and
who has cared for nearly all the victims of
the Fool Killer il that institution, recently
read paper on the subject before the College
of Physicians and Surgeons. In five years
he has discovered that the number of cases
increases about per cent. every yeas, and
that persons are more easily made uncon-
soious by coal gas than by ether or almost
any other an9esthetic. In 1892 no less than
43 persons, 81 OF whom were men, were at
Bellevue treated for asphyxiation or partial
sutfocation caused by blowing out gas in
their sleeping rooms. In the same period
IA patients suffering from the same trouble
were cured, 5 at the New York hospital
and 9 at Chambers Street hospital.
These figures do not include those who
were cured by ambulance doctors Nor do
the figures obtained from Bellevue hospital
include those who turned on unlghted gas
with suicidal intent. With very few excsp-
tlons all these patients came from boarding
or lodging houses or from cheap hotels.
DR.. Carruthers says that the fact which
impressed him most in his examination Of
the "blow-out-the-gas" crauks was their in
telligenoe, which he seems to think should
have prevented them from indulging In such
dangerous tomfOolery. This appears singu-
lar when one considers how public the news
papers and the caricaturIsts have made this
very class of ninnies He also says that ex-
cepting the few Italians. Poles and Huns
who have fallen victims to their ignorance,
all the shining marks Of the Fool Killer are
country folks accustomed TO go 10 bed by
candle or lamp light, and who, though they
had some general knowledge Of gas, had not
the slightest idea of its danger or how 1t is
controlled.
Strange to say, the strongest men with
the nearest perfect lungs are first to sue
cumb to escaping gas, but the doctor ex-
planned it by the power such persons have
90 gulp down almost half a foot of gas
with every inhalation. In many cases, IL
detected before the breathing apparatus is
completely clogged with the noxious vapor,
an ambulance doctor eau bring the sufferer
back to semi-consoiousness; but even then
il ne do not receive constant care as a hos
pital he is likely to die without regaining
his senses.
In some instances such sufferers from
their own folly have been known to be in a
state of coma fiuttering between life and
death for a dozen hours or more. If the
body is not past hope al electric battery
will usually make him show some signs of
life, after which he is hogged and marched
until revived enough to be put to bed.
Nausea, compiled with depressed feeling in
the lungs, is felt for days after che loon is
out Of all danger.
Two men knocked out by the Fool Killer
In Bowery lodging houses lost their lives
last winter through the stupidity of the
ambulance doctors, who diagnosed their
ailment az drunkenness and left them to
die. Perhaps a small percentage of those
witless ones who are found overcome by
gas escaping from open unlighted burners
in their rooms may truthfully attribute
their torture to oarelessness in turning
checkless cut-offs too far around, that is !.
twisting the poisonous stuff off and on with
one movement OF the wrist.
~ make it a rule" said DR.. Carruthers.
ito question all patients oonvalescing after
inhalation of illuminating gas as to what
possessed them to blow out the flame, and
the answer common to nearly all of them
Is that they knew no other way to extin-
guish it. Almost every one of them ad-
mitted that they knew in a somewhat iu-
dehoite way what gas is, as well as what it
is used for, but they had had no experience
with it until they came to eXtinguish it,"
Therefore the doctor gathers from this
that the fool killer will continue to get in
its baleful work until electricity everywhere
supersedes gas az an illuminate yet he fears
that even then some jays would break the
iucaadescsnt globe to quench the flames
therein.
The ordeal experienced by a batch OF
Tammany men, rooming with a jay from
the mountains OF Maine. on the night before
the Inauguration of President Cleveland ia
Washington, is not likely 10 be forgotten by
them when the yankee has went to the
sweet hereafter. He found the Fool Killer
Ia good shape. He blew out the gas, and IL
seems almost miraculous that the Tammany
statesmen also were not made as dead as
dried Gods.
AS soon as the quartet Of Tammanyites
learned that tho cause of the close squeak
they had heard hailed from Maine,
they declared that Il was but
malicious republican conspiracy to
land four good democrats in the
cold. GOLD ground. Their wrath became
tempered little when they heard that the
down easter had turned up his toes for
good.
1t happened in a private house, tenanted