The Grim Reaper visited a male friend of mine the other day. Mr Reaper called by very unexpectedly at four a.m. and stayed just long enough to drop an anvil onto my friend’s chest before slipping silently away into the early morning darkness.
Death was robbed of his sting by the speedy arrival of an ambulance, the attentions of skilled and doctors and nurses, and the rapid application of modern pharmaceuticals and medical technique.
Not entirely coincidentally, I have been reading an arcane piece of literature called “Touching on Deaths” I uncovered at the Founders Book Fair. It’s a medical history of early Auckland based on the first 384 inquests held in the city. Its author, New Zealand doctor turned historian, Laurie Gluckman, spent ten years transcribing reports - hand-written in spidery pen and ink - of all the inquests held between 1841 and 1864.
Not entirely coincidentally, I have been reading an arcane piece of literature called “Touching on Deaths” I uncovered at the Founders Book Fair. It’s a medical history of early Auckland based on the first 384 inquests held in the city. Its author, New Zealand doctor turned historian, Laurie Gluckman, spent ten years transcribing reports - hand-written in spidery pen and ink - of all the inquests held between 1841 and 1864.
Heart attack was recorded as the cause of death in twenty of the 384 inquests. Before succumbing, victims complained of “unpleasant sensations” or “uneasiness in the chest” and one 25-year-old was so agitated by the pain that observers at first thought he was ”in the throes of a nightmare”. One Charles Trainor, suffering a headache and “something pulsating under the collar-bone” did not even bother to call for a doctor. Nor did he avail himself of over-the-counter remedies like “Holloway’s Pills - The Greatest Cure of any in the Globe” or “Dr Simpson’s Infallible Worm Lozenges”. Instead he attempted to ease his discomfort by bathing his feet, then “lay down, stretched out his right arm and died immediately” of “a rupture of the large blood vessel near the heart”.
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My friend would most definitely be dead now if he had suffered his heart attack in Auckland in the decades covered by these inquests: medical attention would have come slowly on foot or by horse, if at all; many doctors of the period had only the most rudimentary of medical training; analysis of blood or urine was by sight or smell (or occasionally taste, in the case of urine); the causes and transmission of disease and infection were imperfectly understood; the stethoscope, ophthalmoscope and thermometer were very recent inventions. Even the accurate measurement of the pulse was unusual before pocket watches became cheaply available in the 1860’s.
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