Volume 1 — AN ACCOUNT OF THE DISEASE OCCASIONED BY DRINKING COLD WATER IN WARM WEATHER, AND THE METHOD OF CURING IT.

Few summers elapse in Philadelphia, in which there are not instances of many persons being diseased by drinking cold water. In some seasons, four or five persons have died suddenly from this cause, in one day. This mortality falls chiefly upon the labouring part of the community, who seek to allay their thirst by drinking the water from the pumps in the streets, and who are too impatient, or too ignorant, to use the necessary precautions for preventing its morbid or deadly effects upon them. These accidents seldom happen, except when the mercury rises above 85° in Fahrenheit's thermometer.

Three circumstances generally concur to produce disease or death, from drinking cold water. 1. The patient is extremely warm. 2. The water is extremely cold. And 3. A large quantity of it is suddenly taken into the body. The danger from drinking the cold water is always in proportion to the degrees of combination which occur in the three circumstances that have been mentioned.

The following symptoms generally follow, where cold water has been taken, under the above circumstances, into the body:

In a few minutes after the patient has swallowed the water, he is affected by a dimness of sight; he staggers in attempting to walk, and, unless supported, falls to the ground; he breathes with difficulty; a rattling is heard in his throat; his nostrils and cheeks expand and contract in every act of respiration; his face appears suffused with blood, and of a livid colour; his extremities become cold, and his pulse imperceptible; and, unless relief be speedily obtained, the disease terminates in death, in four or five minutes.

This description includes only the less common cases of the effects of drinking a large quantity of cold water, when the body is preternaturally heated. More frequently, patients are seized with acute spasms in the breast and stomach. These spasms are so painful as to produce syncope, and even asphyxia. They are sometimes of the tonic, but more frequently of the clonic kind. In the intervals of the spasms, the patient appears to be perfectly well. The intervals between each spasm become longer or shorter, according as the disease tends to life or death.

It may not be improper to take notice, that punch, beer, and even toddy, when drunken under the same circumstances as cold water, have all been known to produce the same morbid and fatal effects.

I know of but one certain remedy for this disease, and that is LIQUID LAUDANUM. The doses of it, as in other cases of spasm, should be proportioned to the violence of the disease. From a tea-spoonful to near a table-spoonful have been given in some instances, before relief has been obtained. Where the powers of life appear to be suddenly suspended, the same remedies should be used, which have been so successfully employed in recovering persons supposed to be dead from drowning.

Care should be taken in every case of disease, or apparent death, from drinking cold water, to prevent the patient's suffering from being surrounded, or even attended by too many people.

Persons who have been recovered from the immediate danger which attends this disease, are sometimes affected after it, by inflammations and obstructions in the breast or liver. These generally yield to the usual remedies which are administered in those complaints, when they arise from other causes.

If neither the voice of reason, nor the fatal examples of those who have perished from this cause, are sufficient to produce restraint in drinking a large quantity of cold liquors, when the body is preternaturally heated, then let me advise to

1. Grasp the vessel out of which you are about to drink for a minute or longer, with both your hands. This will abstract a portion of heat from the body, and impart it at the same time to the cold liquor, provided the vessel be made of metal, glass, or earth; for heat follows the same laws, in many instances, in passing through bodies, with regard to its relative velocity, which we observe to take place in electricity.

2. If you are not furnished with a cup, and are obliged to drink by bringing your mouth in contact with the stream which issues from a pump, or a spring, always wash your hands and face, previously to your drinking, with a little of the cold water. By receiving the shock of the water first upon those parts of the body, a portion of its heat is conveyed away, and the vital parts are thereby defended from the action of the cold.

By the use of these preventives, inculcated by advertisements pasted upon pumps by the Humane Society, death from drinking cold water has become a rare occurrence for many years past in Philadelphia.