Clinical study of poisoning by coal gas during the decade 1938-1948

Abstract

Throughout the British Isles there can be few hospitals with a ward serving so large a population as the detention ward of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Practically all cases of poisoning occurring in the South Eastern Region of Scotland pass through this ward, and it was this unique feature which prompted me to inquire more closely into the large group of patients poisoned by coal gas either by accident or by intent.With interest stimulated and reading widened, I realised that poisoning by gas still presented many problems; what was fact to one author appeared apocryphal to another; the problem as to whether the toxicity of illuminating gas was due to a pure anoxia or to a toxaemia; the frequency of sequelae and their relation to accidental and to suicidal poisoning, particularly in the subclinical types; the effective treatment and the Public Health problems associated with the subject; the known but as yet ignored increase in the accident rate due to coal gas poisoning over the last ten years, and whether some more lasting and more definite identification could not be introduced into the gas to safeguard the public.As light was shed more clearly on some problems others presented their diverse shapes, and these I attempted to clarify both by reference to experimental and clinical studies embracing the years 1938 -1948.