Bathing and Boating Accidents. 
BY 
IRVING C. ROSSEj A.M., M.D., 
OF WASHINGTON, D. C. 
PROFESSOR OF NERVOUS DISEASES, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY. 
Read in the Section of State Medicine at the Fortieth Annual Meeting 
of the American Medical Association, June, 1889. 
Reprinted from the "Journal of the American Medical 
Association," April 19, 1890. 
CHICAGO 
Printed at the Office of the Association. 
1890. BATHING AND BOATING ACCIDENTS. 
I am not sure that I could have selected a more 
appropriate time and place to bring to the notice 
of the profession some of the accidents that occur 
in bathing and boating. Even here in lovely 
Newport, where I have spent many happy days, 
sad cases of drowning occur every season, and it 
is safe to say that most of them arise from inex- 
perience in swimming and are consequently pre- 
ventable. As a physician and practical athlete, 
I may show more than ordinary enthusiasm in 
making a plea for the educational, hygienic and 
curative advantages of an exercise that I have 
practiced at many different places over the world 
from the tropics to the Arctic Ocean, and in such 
places as mountain lakes, the mid-Atlantic, and 
even in a volcanic crater some 2,000 feet deep. 
The frequent accounts of drowning that one 
reads constantly in the daily papers at this season, 
aside from those occurring in the late floods, instead 
of dampening rather rekindle an ardor to which is 
added a tinge of regret consequent upon the re- 
flection that most of these accidents arise from 
inability to swim; for with only a moderate knowl- 
edge of this easily acquired art, many lives may 
be saved and much bereavement prevented. Phil- 
anthropic motives, if no other, would therefore 
prompt one to give the matter more than passing 
notice. In view of the surprising great number 
of deaths from drowning, it is lamentable in this 
practical age that the useful art of swimming takes 2 
such small part in the training of youth. Young 
minds are crammed with all sorts of useless infor- 
mation to the neglect of what is essential to the 
preservation of personal health and the saving of 
life. Legislators vote large sums of money for 
doubtful jobs, yet refuse to countenance the estab- 
lishment of swimming baths in our cities. The 
police regulations of most of our large towns, 
conceived in the interests of extreme prudery, 
virtually tend to make swimming one of tbe lost 
arts. Those of the District of Columbia, for in- 
stance, were evidently framed in the same spirit 
of protest which caused a former Governor of 
Maryland to object to midshipmen swimming from 
a certain wharf in the Naval Academy because the 
ladies could see them with their opera glasses. 
That people do not fully realize the importance 
of swimming is a trite observation, but a truth none 
the worse for frequent repetition, and allowing it 
to lie fallow will never bring about the desired re- 
formation. Long personal experience with swim- 
ming so convinces me of its usefulness that, if it 
came to a choice between knowing the higher 
mathematics or how to swim, I should choose the 
latter every time. At many of the larger schools 
in England lads are obliged to pass in swimming 
before they are allowed to go out in boats. This 
rule, established at Eton in 1840, has been effec- 
tual there in the prevention of drowning, only 
one case having occurred since that time, although 
the swamping of boats has been frequent. A 
yearly average of 150 boys learn to swim and pass 
the test. It is, of course, possible to enforce such 
a rule in schools and among bodies of individuals 
where discipline obtains, yet this manly and in- 
vigorating accomplishment is neglected both in 
educational establishments and in the Army. 
Swimming is taught at our Naval Academy, but 3 
at West Point it is not, and most of the cadets 
are lamentably deficient in this respect. The sta- 
tistical exhibits of our late war show the strong- 
est reason why a soldier should know how to 
swim. The aggregation of killed in action is 
shown to be 67,058, while there were drowned 
106 officers and 4,838 men. The small regular 
Army lost 5 officers and 89 men from this cause ; 
the U. S. colored troops 6 officers and 289 men; 
and the volunteers furnished a large contingent, 
the State of Ohio alone having lost 14 officers and 
770 men from drowning. Just think of a number 
amounting to five regiments perishing from an 
easily preventable cause-for the majority of these 
men were drowned in such circumstances as ford- 
ing a stream, crossing narrow rivers, or by the up- 
setting of small boats when a few strokes would 
have sufficed to save life. 
But the best swimmers are often drowned, say 
the cynical wiseacres. True, a good swimmer 
sometimes meets with that misfortune, but the 
occurrence is so rare that for that very reason a 
vivid effect is produced on the imagination and 
memory of unthinking persons who, accustomed 
to make post hoc conclusions, never for a moment 
consider the greater number who are saved by 
knowing how to swim. 
Among other prevailing and groundless objec- 
tions to swimming are the production of colds, 
the danger of heart failure and the risk of being 
bitten by sharks. As to colds and the effects of 
the cold immersion in the water, I should say 
that the danger therefrom is greatly exaggerated, 
if my own experience is any guide, for I have 
never had a cold from swimming in icy water, 
even under the Arctic Circle. On the contrary, 
one of the severest colds I ever had was contract- 
ed in Washington some years since with the ther- 4 
mometer high in the nineties, which necessitated 
a visit to the seashore, where after two swims the 
cold disappeared as if by magic. 
There are, of course, many weak people whose 
chest organs are in such condition that they should 
not venture to swim; but I am convinced that the 
neglect to learn swimming in childhood and the 
absence of this eminently hygienic exercise are 
responsible for many flabby hearts, weak lungs 
and torpid minds. 
In addition to being generally tonic and brac- 
ing, the effect of swimming considered in itself is 
to develop the muscular system and to exert a 
favorable influence on the great bodily functions, 
as the digestion, nutrition, respiration, circulation 
and innervation. No other exercise with which 
I am familiar gets the heart and lungs in better 
working order, and none is better for getting one 
in what sporting men call "condition." After 
two weeks' daily swim in salt water I have run a 
measured mile on a beach with very little more 
embarrassment to circulation and respiration than 
if I had walked the same distance. 
Aside from the physical, another advantage of 
a high order accrues in the way of happy moral 
influence. Boxing, sword play and several other 
manly pastimes will do much to develop courage, 
prudence and cleverness; but the cold-blooded 
quiet and presence of mind which aid us to avoid 
danger or to conquer it, or to lend ourselves to an 
act of devotion, are best cultivated by the exercise 
of swimming. What, for instance, is a more bril- 
liant and commendable act of devotion than that 
of a dauntless swimmer who, regardless of self, 
plunges overboard at the risk of his own life to 
save a fellow-being from drowning? 
As a curative means, swimming also conies in 
for praise. In this respect it is superior in many 5 
conditions to the so-called "tent cure," to mas- 
sage, electricity, or drugs, and may be employed 
with benefit in scrofula, chlorosis, convalescence, 
insomnia and many other nervous diseases, as 
chorea and hysteria. The latter malady espe- 
cially, I have known to be cured after a course in 
the swimming baths of Alameda, Cal.; and my 
experience as a neurologist leads me to recom- 
mend swimming as one of the best adjuvants in 
the treatment of nervous diseases. 
The danger to be apprehended from sharks is 
more a figment of the mind than a reality. I 
have no personal knowledge of shark bites, al- 
though I have done much swimming in such in- 
fested places as the Gulf of Mexico, the harbor 
of Cadiz, the Azore Islands, Bermuda, Tybee, the 
mid-Atlantic and other places where these vora- 
cious animals are reputed to gobble up such small 
bait as a man at a single mouthful. For years I 
have made it a point to question sailors and fish- 
ermen in various parts of the world as to their 
actual and personal knowledge of shark bites, and 
though the inquiry has called forth some remark- 
able fish stories, I have met but two people with 
any personal knowledge of the matter. Admiral 
Porter tells me of an instance in which he saw a 
man attacked ; the other person, a pilot at Ber- 
muda, knew of a man that had his hand bitten 
by a shark just as he was pulling in a hooked fish 
from the water into his boat. Sharks often collect 
around the carcass of a whale while it is being 
"cut in," and men sometimes slip overboard 
among them, yet after a long residence in New 
Bedford and a somewhat extended experience with 
the Pacific Arctic whaling fleet, I have never met 
a whaleman who could tell me of a man that had 
been bitten. My friend, Mr. Truxton Beale, of 
Washington, a short time since, when a passen- 6 
ger on the Pacific Mail, showed his unbelief in 
shark stories by swimming across the shark in- 
fested harbor of Acapulco, although warned by 
the captain of the ship that he would be eaten up 
before he got a hundred yards away. 
Traditional accounts of the rapacity of sharks 
are as extravagant as the records of some of the 
old writers who tell of dead sharks cast upon the 
shores of the Mediterranean of such size that men 
walked into the mouth and down the throat in 
order to inspect the stomach. Even Rondelet, in 
his History of Fishes, speaks of these animals as 
having swallowed men in entire suits of armor. 
Documentary evidence as to shark bites is also 
very scanty. During the last fifty years, soldiers 
by the tens of thousands have swam at Fort Mon- 
roe, Va., yet there is no record of one having been 
bitten by a shark, nor have I been able to ascer- 
tain that any accident of the kind has occurred at 
Malta or Gibraltar. There does not appear to be 
a record of any one ever having been bitten by a 
shark off the British Isles. I have been unable to 
ascertain that a single bite of the kind is reported 
among the medical records of our War or Navy 
Departments or those of the Marine-Hospital. In 
a book about the West Indies, Mr. Charles Ives 
says it is singular that so few facts are reported 
which indicate the danger from Bahama sharks, 
and that the divers continue to be so numerous 
and bold. He has heard of but one instance in 
which a Nassau shark has dined upon a negro, and 
the report in that case is not well authenticated. 
The New York Herald, a few years ago, gave 
an account of a boy who was bitten while swim- 
ming in East River, and afterwards died at Belle- 
vue Hospital. 
Medical literature has but few reports of shark 
bites. After ten years' diligent search I have 7 
found but seven references, the earliest in the 
London Medical Gazette, 1823, and the latest in 
the London Lancet, 1886. The bites occurred in 
Australia, South Africa and India. The Hoogh- 
ley and Ganges Rivers are the worst places in the 
world for sharks and alligators. A particular kind 
of shark, the Carcharras Gangeticus, which is very 
fierce and bold, sometimes dashes among the 
crowds at the bathing ghats, and has been known 
to bite a boy in two feet of water. All persons 
bitten at these places generally die from the bite, 
for the reason that the shark, living on carrion 
portions of which stick between the teeth, carries 
infection to those whom it may afterwards bite. 
The former habit of throwing the dead in the 
river is supposed to account for the boldness of 
these particular sharks in attacking the human 
species. 
Even admitting the occasional accident of 
shark bites, the danger therefrom is almost infin- 
itesimal compared with railway travel or even ac- 
cidents from horses; and neither this unimportant 
drawback, nor any other that I have mentioned, 
should have the least weight in preventing the 
cultivation and spread of an accomplishment that 
every one should countenance with a view, not to 
the renewal of the legendary exploits of Leander 
and Byron, but as a step in that branch of social 
evolution which better physical development and 
improved health tend to promote.