CHEMICAL METHODS FOR THE DETERMINATION OF DEATH BY DROWNING

Abstract

Drowning entails changes due to obstructive asphyxia, and to exchange of water or electrolytes between inhaled fluid and the blood. The asphyxial changes, not being specific for drowning, are diagnostic only when their absence negatives the possibility of drowning. Diffusion of water or electrolytes across the pulmonary capillaries has been studied by comparing blood from the right heart to blood from the left. The author reduces to a common terminology, so far as possible, the data available in the literature for rabbit, dog, and man, comparing deaths by drowning with deaths from other causes as controls. Chloride concs. from the left heart are generally higher than from the right after drowning in sea water, the reverse after drowning in fresh water, and scarcely different in deaths from other causes; but the data are so scanty and variable that a difference must be very high to have diagnostic value statistically. Analysis for the chloride conc, of pleural, pericardial, and peritoneal fluids are fewer and more variable than those in blood, useless as yet for legal purposes. Still scarcer, in the literature, but far more promising for detn. of death by drowning in sea water, if the specimens can be obtained early, are estimates of Mg conc. in the left side of the heart.