I smelled
his breath, which was very feeble. It had a sickish sweet odour,
but that did not impress me at the time. I applied my stethoscope
to his lungs. There was a very marked congestion, and I made as
my working diagnosis pneumonia. It was a case for quick and
heroic action. In a very few minutes I had a tank of oxygen from
the hospital.
"In the meantime I had thought over that sweetish odour, and it
flashed on my mind that it might, after all, be a case of
poisoning. When the oxygen arrived I administered it at once. As
it happens, the Rockefeller Institute has just published a report
of experiments with a new antidote for various poisons, which
consists simply in a new method of enforced breathing and
throwing off the poison by oxidising it in that way. In either
case--the pneumonia theory or the poison theory--this line of
action was the best that I could have adopted on the spur of the
moment. I gave him some strychnine to strengthen his heart and by
hard work I had him resting apparently a little easier. A nurse
had been sent for, but had not arrived when a messenger came to
me telling of a very sudden illness of Mrs. Morey, the wife of
the steel-magnate. As the Morey home is only a half-block away, I
left Mr. Morowitch, with very particular instructions to his wife
as to what to do.
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