Lethal Organs

What actually kills a man in an airplane crash? In some cases the cause of death may be his own internal organs. Reason: the impact turns them into internal missiles. So reported an Army doctor (Captain George Marvin Hass of the Army Air Forces School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Field, Texas) last fortnight to the Aero Medical Association's meeting at Cincinnati.

Many a crash victim, said Captain Hass, has been picked up with a few broken bones and no obviously dangerous injury. Later he has sickened and died from internal damage of which his doctors were unaware. Lethal internal blows may also be dealt not by the impact of internal organs themselves, but by food in the stomach, urine in the bladder, blood in a chamber of a man's heart. Captain Hass said that if doctors had known of these crash effects in the past, many victims could have been diagnosed in time to save their lives by simple operations. Lieut. Colonel W. Randolph Lovelace, retiring president of the Association, called the paper the most important given before the Association in its 15-year history.

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