Reumeaux in the Bulletin de l'Industrie Minerale. Working with his brother in a gallery which issued on the shaft, he forgot the direction in which he was pushing a truck; so it went over, and he after it, falling into some mud with about three inches of water. As stated in Nature, he seems neither to have struck any of the wood debris, nor the sides of the shaft, and he showed no contusions when he was helped out by his brother after about ten minutes. He could not, however, recall any of his impressions during the fall. The velocity on reaching the bottom would be about 140 feet, and time of fall 4.12 seconds; but it is thought he must have taken longer. It appears strange that he should have escaped simple suffocation and loss of consciousness during a time sufficient for the water to have drowned him.
While intoxicated Private Gough of the 42d Royal Highlanders attempted to escape from the castle at Edinburgh. He fell almost perpendicularly 170 feet, fracturing the right frontal sinus, the left clavicle, tibia, and fibula. In five months he had so far recovered as to be put on duty again, and he served as an efficient soldier. There is an account of recovery after a fall of 192 feet, from a cliff in County Antrim, Ireland. Manzini mentions a man who fell from the dome of the Invalides in Paris, without sustaining any serious accident, and there is a record from Madrid of a much higher fall than this without serious consequence. In 1792 a bricklayer fell from the fourth story of a high house in Paris, landing with his feet on the dirt and his body on stone. He bled from the nose, and lost consciousness for about forty-five minutes; he was carried to the Hotel-Dieu where it was found that he had considerable difficulty in breathing;the regions about the external malleoli were contused and swollen, but by the eighth day the patient had recovered. In the recent reparation of the Hotel Raleigh in Washington, D.C., a man fell from the top of the building, which is above the average height, fracturing several ribs and rupturing his lung. He was taken to the Emergency Hospital where he was put to bed, and persistent treatment for shock was pursued; little hope of the man's recovery was entertained. His friends were told of his apparently hopeless condition. There were no external signs of the injury with the exception of the emphysema following rupture of the lung. Respiration was limited and thoracic movement diminished by adhesive straps and a binder; under careful treatment the man recovered.
Kartulus mentions an English boy of eight who, on June 1, 1879, while playing on the terrace in the third story of a house in Alexandria, in attempting to fly a kite in company with an Arab servant, slipped and fell 71 feet to a granite pavement below. He was picked up conscious, but both legs were fractured about the middle. He had so far recovered by the 24th of July that he could hobble about on crutches. On the 15th of November of the same year he was seen by Kartulus racing across the playground with some other boys; as he came in third in the race he had evidently lost little of his agility. Parrott reports the history of a man of fifty, weighing 196 pounds, who fell 110 feet from the steeple of a church. In his descent he broke a scaffold pole in two, and fell through the wooden roof of an engine-house below, breaking several planks and two strong joists, and landing upon some sacks of cement inside the house. When picked up he was unconscious, but regained his senses in a short time, and it was found that his injuries were not serious. The left metacarpal bones were dislocated from the carpal bones, the left tibia was fractured, and there were contusions about the back and hips. Twelve days later he left for home with his leg in plaster. Farber and McCassy report a case in which a man fell 50 feet perpendicularly through an elevator shaft, fracturing the skull. Pieces of bone at the superior angle of the occipital bone were removed, leaving the aura exposed for a space one by four inches. The man was unconscious for four days, but entirely recovered in eighteen days, with only a slightly subnormal hearing as an after-effect of his fall.
For many years there have been persons who have given exhibitions of high jumps, either landing in a net or in the water. Some of these hazardous individuals do not hesitate to dive from enormous heights, being satisfied to strike head first or to turn a somersault in their descent. Nearly all the noted bridges in this country have had their "divers." The death of Odlum in his attempt to jump from Brooklyn bridge is well known. Since then it has been claimed that the feat has been accomplished without any serious injury. It is reported that on June 20, 1896, a youth of nineteen made a headlong dive from the top of the Eads bridge at St. Louis, Mo., a distance of 125 feet. He is said to have swum 250 feet to a waiting tug, and was taken on board without having been hurt.
Probably the most interesting exhibition of this kind that was ever seen was at the Royal Aquarium, London, in the summer of 1895. A part of the regular nightly performance at this Hall, which is familiar on account of its immensity, was the jump of an individual from the rafters of the large arched roof into a tank of water about 15 by 20 feet, and from eight to ten feet deep, sunken in the floor of the hall. Another performer, dressed in his ordinary street clothes, was tied up in a bag and jumped about two-thirds of this height into the same tank, breaking open the bag and undressing himself before coming to the surface. In the same performance a female acrobat made a backward dive from the topmost point of the building into a net stretched about ten feet above the floor. Nearly every large acrobatic entertainment has one of these individuals who seem to experience no difficulty in duplicating their feats night after night.
