Medicine: Tough Baby

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Didier spent a pleasant weekend at Diamond Lake, Ill., swimming, sunning themselves, showing off their three-month-old baby to the neighbors. Then they started for home with little Robert, wrapped snugly in his blankets, tucked in a corner of the back seat. Suddenly the car jolted, the baby fell off the seat. When Mr. Didier stopped the car and picked him up, no wail or whimper came from the tightly wrapped flannel bundle. “He’s suffocated, he’s dead,” cried the father.

Pushing the accelerator down to the floor, he sped to the nearest drugstore, tried artificial respiration for ten minutes. The baby began to turn blue. The druggist shook his head. “He’s dead,” said he. But the agonized father would not give up hope. He dashed 14 miles to Wheeling, ran into the hospital, gave the baby to Dr. Edward L. Larson. Dr. Larson put Robert into a hot bath, massaged his heart, tried artificial respiration, and finally adrenalin to constrict the small blood vessels and send a rush of necessary blood to the heart. In half an hour little Robert stirred, whimpered, opened his eyes. Next day he cried, suckled, belched as lustily as ever. Little Robert’s accident last week furnished additional proof for the heartening facts that 1) babies are tough, 2) superficial signs of death do not always mean what they say. If all fathers were as quick-witted as Charles Didier and rushed their “smothered” babies to a physician, the rate of infant mortality would be lower. A baby’s heart beat is so shallow, so rapid, that often only an expert with a stethoscope can detect it. And in the case of shock, the beat is intermittent, almost inaudible. Even blueness is not so much a sign of approaching death as a warning of oxygen deficiency.

Adults who have been struck by lightning (see p. 18), overcome by carbon monoxide, shocked by an electric current, or submerged under water as long as half an hour, can often be “brought to life” again. Essential treatment is immediate and continuous artificial respiration. This month’s issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal cites the case of a young lineman who was shocked by 26,000 volts, received immediate treatment by trained fellow-workmen, and after eight hours of unconsciousness began to breathe normally. “The only really safe plan,” said the Journal, “is to continue efforts until rigor mortis has set in.”