s of emergencies is of a more startling character,
and I think that a history of the case which I now present offers some
peculiar features, and will not be without interest to physicians.

The accident which forms the subject of this paper occurred August 29,
1890, at South Harpswell, Casco Bay, Me., where I was passing my
vacation.

At about 9.30 A.M., M. B----, an American, aged eighteen, the son of a
fisherman, a young man of steady habits and a good constitution, with
excellent muscular development, and who had never before required the
aid of a physician, was seen by the residents of the village to fall
forward from a skiff into the water and go down with uplifted hands. I
could not learn that he rose at all after the first submersion. Two
men were standing near a bluff which overlooked the bay, and after an
instant's delay in deciding that an accident had occurred, they ran
over an uneven and undulating pasture for a distance of two hundred
and fifty paces to the shore. One of them, after a quick decision not
to swim out to where the young man had fallen in and dive for him,
removed trousers and boots and waded out five yards to a boat, which
he drew into the shore and entered with his companion, taking him to a
yacht which lay two hundred and forty yards from the shore, in the
padlocked cabin of which was a boat hook. The padlock was unfastened,
the boat hook taken, and they proceeded by the boat directly to where
the young man lay. He was seen through the clear water, lying at a
depth of nine feet at the bottom of the bay, on his back, with
upturned face and arms extended from the sides of the body. He was
quickly seized by the boat hook, drawn head upward to the surface, and
with the inferior portion of the body hanging over the stern of the
boat, and the superior supported in the arms of his rescuer, was rowed
rapidly to the shore, where he was rolled a few times, and then placed
prone upon a tub for further rolling. I was told that much water came
from his mouth. Meantime I had been sent for to where I was sitting,
one hundred and fifty-one yards from the scene, and I arrived to find
him apparently lifeless on the tub, and to be addressed with the
remark, "Well, doctor, I suppose we are doing all that can be done."

I have given these details, as from a study of them I was aided in
deciding the time of submersion, as well as the intervals which
transpired before the intelligent use of remedies. It is also