A retrospective study of spleen findings in 42 victims of drowning and a comparison group of 42 c,lses of asphyxiation due to other causes (hanging, ligature strangulation and manual strangulation), that were matched for sex, age, body weight and build, was performed.Significantly smaller spleen weights (P < 0.05), spleen weightbody weight ratios (P < 0.01) and spl.een weight:liver weight ratios (P < 0.01) were found in the victims of drowning. The difference in weight was -18"!.,. A significant negative correlation between spleen weight and blood alcohol concentration was found in the study group (r = -0.44; P < 0.01), but not in the control group. The possibility that the findings are due to a stress reaction caused by hypoxia in the presence of cooling and an influence of alcohol on reflex mechanisms is discussed.

No abstract

At the autopsy of a 25-year-old man who had died from combined morphine and cocaine intoxication, depositions of metallic mercury were incidentally found in the myocardium of the right ventricular septum and posterior wall. Deposits, toxicologically identified as mercury, were also found radiologically and histologically in the lungs. All these deposits were probably the result of intravenous injections of mercury many months previously, as is known to be done occasionally by addicts. Judging by the histological picture the greatest proportion of the mercury collected in the right ventricular cavity after injection, a smaller amount by embolization in the small pulmonary arteries. The mercury spheres which came to lie in the right ventricle then penetrated into the myocardium, moving outward and causing a chronic and partly transmural inflammatory response.