An infant was fatally scalded after pulling a tea-tray off the table however medical advice was sought only from the nearest druggists.
“On the 9th inst. an Inquest was held before Mr.Wakley, M.P., at the Crown Inn, Kensington, on the body of Emily Burt, an infant, aged 16 months, whose death occured under the following circumstances:-Thomas Burt, a journeyman coachmaker, residing in Gardiner’s buildings, Kensington, deposed that he was the father of the deceased. On the morning of Friday the 5th, he, with his wife and four children, were sitting at breakfast, and he was informing his wife of the decease of his mother, which had taken place that morning, when the deceased child pulled the tea-tray off the table, and the contents of the tea-pot fell over her face and shoulders, scalding her very much. He immediately applied some scraped potatoes, and also some clarified neatsfoot oil, and afterwards went and stated the circumstances to a neighbouring chemist, who gave him some lininment, some plaster, and a draught, which were applied and administered, from which the child appeared much better; but about nine o’clock on a Saturday evening his wife sent for him, and on reaching home he found the deceased in convulsions, and within five minutes she expired. He did not call in any medical assistance, the change was so sudden. The chemist did not see the deceased. Mr. Wakley, in addressing the jury, said that he regretted exceedingly that a medical practitioner had not seen the infant. He doubted not the respectablity of the druggist who had supplied the liniment and the draught, but that trademen and others of his calling ought to know they they incurred a fearful responsibility in undertaking the management of such cases. He had already directed the constable always to summon the druggists as witnesses at inquests on the bodies of persons for whose maladies they had undertaken to prescribe. He now again repeated his instructions to contsables to that effect. It was a rule of conduct which he was determined to observe; and thus the medical examination to which druggists would be subjected before the jury would soon prove to the court whether they were competent to undertake the treatment of important diseases, and acted with judgement and prudence in prescribing remedies without posessing an efficient knowledge of the structure of the human body, and of the maladies by which it was afflicted. It was one thing to understand the qualities of drugs and to know how to compound them, and another to comprehend the character of the complaints for the cure for which they should be administered. In the present case a medical practitioner of skill and ability would have known that the infant required the most competent and vigilant watching, and not the less so because it became quiet soon after the accident, and appeared to the unprofessional observer to be free from danger. The scalding water had fallen over its entire face, embracing the whole of its forehead. The injury was therefore close to the brain; hence the shock to the nervous system was extreme. Accordingly it was found that when the child, to the inexperienced eye, seemed recovering, it was seized with convulsions, and died in a few hours. It was the business of the court to inquire into the cause of the death, and as the absence of proper medical treatment might be one of them, he was determined, in all future cases, to adhere to the rule which he had laid down respecting the summoning and examination of prescribing druggists, and hoped that such a practice would have a beneficial effect on the public health. The jury returned a verdict of “accidentally scalded.”
The Stamford Mercury 19th April, 1839