Seaton says ingesting it is only one way to feel its debilitating effects. You can breathe it in too, which was the original intent of the chemical. It's too toxic," explained Seaton.
The health effects from the chemical, which is a probable carcinogen, are alarming as well. Basically, it can be deadly," Seaton said. Surprisingly, it can be made by combining several household products like bleach and acetone or nail polish remover.
A simple YouTube search reveals numerous tutorials on how to make the chemical. Chlorine comes from the bleach itself but it would be produced it in small quantities. However, if you breathe it in, it can be toxic," Seaton said. Seaton says the chemical is highly regulated and not found in stores. If someone has it they have gotten it from work or some other source.
Kimrey remains in the Onslow County Jail under no bond. His next court date is February Skip to content. About Us. Meet the News Team. Previous Newscasts. WECT Anywhere. WECT Jobs. GenX Water Investigation. First Alert Skycams.
First Alert Hurricane Center. Friday Night Football. During the past century and a half, understanding of the etiology of perioperative deaths has increased remarkably. What can be learned from another analysis of the facts surrounding the death of Hannah Greener? Is pulmonary aspiration as the proximal cause of her death a realistic possibility? Did she receive an overdose of chloroform as many of the contemporary physicians argued, or using our 21st-century knowledge, is there a better explanation of her untimely death?
Thomas Nathaniel Meggison, the physician who administered Hannah Greener's anesthetic, initially described the events of that day at a coroner's inquest on February 1, The verbatim proceedings were published in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal. Meggison, a surgeon, stated that:. I seated her in a chair, and put a teaspoon of chloroform into a tablecloth, and held it to her nose. After she had drawn her breath twice, she pulled my hand down.
I told her to draw her breath naturally, which she did, and in about a half a minute I observed muscles of the arm become rigid, and her breathing a little quickened, but not stertorous.
I had my hand on her pulse, which was natural, until the muscles became rigid. It then appeared somewhat weaker—not altered in frequency. I then told Mr. Lloyd, my assistant, to begin the operation, which he did, and took the nail off. When the semicircular incision was made, she gave a struggle or jerk, which I thought was from the chloroform not having taken sufficient effect.
I did not apply anymore. Her eyes were closed, and I opened them, and they remained open. Her mouth was open, and her lips and face blanched. When I opened her eyes, they were congested. I called for water when I saw her face blanched, and I dashed some of it in her face. It had no effect. I then gave her some brandy, a little of which she swallowed with difficulty. I then laid her on the floor and attempted to bleed her in the arm and jugular vein, but only obtained about a spoonful.
She was dead, I believe, at the time I attempted to bleed her. The last time I felt her pulse was immediately perviously to the blanched appearance coming on, and when she gave a jerk. The time would not have been more than 3 min from her first inhaling the chloroform till her death. The results of the inquest were reported in the London Medical Gazette 3 additional details and images documenting findings reported here are available in the Web Enhancement.
A postmortem examination was performed by Sir John Fife and Dr. Robert Mortimer Glover and was reported at the inquest by Sir John. A bloody froth was present on sectioning the alveoli. The stomach was distended with food. The heart contained a dark fluid, and there was little blood in the left atrium and ventricle. Meggison also submitted correspondence dated February 3, , which was published with the proceedings of the inquest 4 additional details are available in the Web Enhancement.
Several details differed from the account in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal. He also admitted to giving his patient some water orally before administering brandy. In his deposition, 2 Meggison claimed that Hannah Greener swallowed, as he did not in the letter to the London Medical Gazette. Flavell, the coroner, read into the inquest's record a report by Dr. Glover published in the Medical Gazette involving experiments on animals to which chloroform was administered.
Glover had injected chloroform intravenously into mice and examined their lungs after death. Glover found that the lungs of the mice were congested in a similar way to Miss Greener's. These findings, coupled with the postmortem findings and the depositions of Sir John Fife and Dr.
As Barbara Duncum points out in her classic book, The Development of Inhalational Anesthesia , the case exemplified the dangers of anesthesia to a medical community that was just beginning to understand the physiologic state induced by these new drugs.
James Young Simpson, who had discovered the anesthetic effects of chloroform less than a year before Hannah's death and who was a major proponent of chloroform for obstetric anesthesia, 6 quickly weighed in on the medical issues surrounding this anesthetic death.
Writing in the first volume of The Lancet additional details are available in the Web Enhancement , Simpson rejected the idea that chloroform's intrinsic action on the lungs caused the pulmonary edema seen during the autopsy. He believed that inhalers were much safer than the administration of chloroform using the handkerchief method. Shortly after Hannah Greener's death, Snow published a series of articles on the stages of narcotism of anesthetic vapors.
There can be little doubt that Hannah Greener's death was used to promote Snow's ideas of increased patient safety by more careful titration of anesthetic depth using inhalers.
Snow was trying to change the accepted practice, and this case gave him a perfect opportunity. Interestingly, in writing his article, Snow interpreted Meggison's story and changed the emphasis of a couple of key points.
Interestingly, in , Snow reported the first 50 deaths during chloroform anesthesia. However, it was his first assessment of the death of Hannah Greener that took hold with the medical community. Approximately yr later, Henry K. Fresh from the laboratory, Beecher was touting the merits of anesthetic research in assessing the toxicity of anesthetic agents.
Beecher cited Goodman Levy's experiments performed in with light chloroform anesthesia and epinephrine induction of fatal cardiac arrhythmia.
When cats under light chloroform anesthesia were injected with a small dose of intravenous epinephrine, sudden ventricular fibrillation occurred. Given the current early 21st-century knowledge, what can be inferred from these descriptions of the events that surrounded Hannah Greener's death?
The differential diagnosis boils down to four realistic possibilities. First, Hannah died of a lethal arrhythmia; second, the cause of death was pulmonary aspiration with asphyxia. The third possibility is that Meggison administered a lethal dose of chloroform. Finally, and clearly the most unlikely, was the coroner's jury finding that chloroform directly chemically injured the lungs, leading to Hannah Greener's death. The fourth diagnosis is perhaps the easiest to eliminate.
Although there was evidence given during the coroner's inquest that chloroform can cause this type of lung injury, this seems to occur during exposure of the lung tissue to very high concentrates of anesthetic. Meggison was specific about the amount of chloroform used, 1 teaspoon, and the fact that he placed it on a handkerchief before administering it to the patient.
How then, could the chloroform have reached the lungs in sufficient concentration required to cause the pathologic changes seen at autopsy? The third diagnosis, that Meggison administered a lethal dose of chloroform to Hannah Greener, is also fairly easy to dismiss. Hannah was a healthy yr-old girl. She had recently received an ether anesthetic for the same procedure on the other foot without apparent difficulty 16 additional details are available in the Web Enhancement.
The description of the events of surgery that day, including the fact that Hannah moved with incision, points in the direction of light anesthesia rather than an overdose. Meggison himself believed that the anesthetic needed to be deepened and was preparing to do so when Hannah stopped breathing. The first and second possibilities, a lethal arrhythmia versus aspiration, remain far more difficult to dismiss.
Given the time course of the events, less than 3 min from the induction of anesthesia to the patient's death, there clearly had to be a significant interruption of circulation as evidenced at the time that Meggison tried to bleed the patient. Miss Greener was a young patient, under light chloroform anesthesia, so it is possible that the catecholamine surge experienced with incision caused pulseless ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation of Hannah's heart. What was the cause of the obvious pulmonary edema?
Water was splashed on Hannah's face, brandy was placed in her mouth, and she may have swallowed. At autopsy, her stomach was full. Could these liquids or stomach contents have been aspirated? It seems likely given the patient's level of consciousness.
It would explain the autopsy findings in the lung. In addition, perhaps the water or brandy also induced laryngospasm, and the pulmonary edema is secondary to her attempting to breathe against a closed glottis. It is impossible, more than yr after the event, to identify definitively what killed Hannah Greener.
0コメント