Medicine: Closing Trachea

Perhaps the description of approaching death which Physiologist Sir Joseph Barcroft presented at Yale last month (TIME, Oct. 19) influenced Dr. Harold Henry Beiermeister, 53, long ill, retired physician of Needham, Mass. Certainly the imminence of death did not terrify him when an excruciating attack of angina pectoris gripped his heart last week. Alone in the house he shared with a sister, he locked all doors, filled a hot water bottle, took pencil & paper, stretched out on the kitchen floor.

At 8 p. m. he began to scrawl about the coming of death: “Angina? Pseudo? Raising right hand over head … hot water . . . relief. Angina . . . pain returning three to five minutes . . . gradual and gradual letup.

“9 p. m.: Tight, tearing pain . . . bronchial spasm over point of sternum [breastbone].

“9:15 p. m.: Spasm under breastbone. Pain in left arm.

“[Not timed]: My arms identical to paralysis at elbows.

“[Not timed]: Closing trachea [wind-pipe].”

Later that evening Dr. Beiermeister’s sister climbed in through a window, found him dead.