Chapter 6 snake curse

In fact, I have seen the deceased many times: he lived in a community not far from my home. In my mind, his image is divided into two completely opposite kinds: on the one hand, he is always in suits and ties, and his hair is always combed back meticulously; Habit, I often see him talking nonsense and slapping the table after getting drunk in the tavern. This is actually extremely contradictory, because alcoholics seldom pay attention to their appearance. When he was alive, I just regarded him as a strange alcoholic, but when he became an unsolved case of unknown death, I Had to think: why is this happening?If a person suddenly changes his original living habits and pays attention to his appearance, the reasons are often the following: the opposite sex (this is the most common), something special happy (for example, he has won a certain honor), and so on.

But we don't see any signs of this, and even, he didn't notice his appearance suddenly at all, but he has been paying attention so much that when I look at his hair, I often think that flies landing on it will also It's wrestling. why?I could not understand. It happened like this, the alcoholic had a son, obviously this son was very competitive, the single-parent family didn't let him get into any bad habits, on the contrary, he was a very hardworking student. He did well in the college entrance examination this time, and he got the admission notice from a key domestic university yesterday; his father was overjoyed, and he held a banquet, inviting all his relatives and friends over, and he even invited a band to play with gongs and drums. Fan, I think in his mind, his son's admission to a key university must be the same as being admitted to the number one scholar, right?But just when everyone asked him to say a few words, he suddenly fell down and never got up again.

When I first took on the case, I thought it might be a simple heart attack or stroke case. This kind of thing is very common: Although my father is only in his early forties, with the improvement of people's living standards, many "rich diseases" such as coronary atherosclerosis, cerebral arteriosclerosis, etc. appear more and more in my appraisal certificate Here, this case seems to be too suitable for this situation-the father's overexcitement has overwhelmed the already fragile heart or brain, and once these diseases attack, they will die as quickly as this father. But it wasn't, and it certainly wasn't.

There was no hemorrhage anywhere in my father's brain: epidural, subdural, subarachnoid (these are the three places where hemorrhage outside the brain often accumulates), not in the brain tissue, and I didn't even see it under the microscope afterward. Any bleeding or infarction (blockage of a blood vessel, which is one of the most common causes of strokes), even the slightest. Not only could I not find any evidence of ischemic necrosis in the heart, but even his coronary arteries were very healthy, no different from those of people in their twenties. My head is getting bigger. There must be a reason why the deceased died so suddenly, but I couldn't find it.

Moreover, he died in full view of hundreds of relatives and friends, how could I not give them an explanation?I had to take a magnifying glass and carefully examine every inch of my father's body again. Finally, a small anomaly (let's call it that for the time being! I can't rule out it being an accident in life) was found on the tip of his index finger. It was a small skin injury: the entire injury was in the shape of "...", the length was no more than two centimeters, and it was distributed along the direction of the fingers. The period was near the end of the palm, and it was a round hole the size of a toothpick head. The hole was very shallow. , I can't even see any bleeding, and the ellipsis below is even more slight, as if a toothpick gently slides over the skin, leaving a white scratch on the skin! (Obviously it wasn't caused by any syringe.) Is there any necessary connection between this and the deceased's death?I'm still scratching my head.

Fortunately, the deceased did not die immediately after he fell, and he was sent to the hospital for about an hour. I still turned to the doctor. It was a hot day in August and when I arrived at the hospital my underwear was all soaked and hanging sticky and obviously bad napkins had left countless white fibers on my face, but when I got home I didn't I understand why the female doctor who manages the medical records of the hospital looks at me so strangely. She quickly took out the medical records for me to check, but the doctor on duty that day went home to rest after the night shift.

I read the case at least three times, and even copied it so that I would not miss a single detail. Weicheng curled his lips when he took it back to look at it: the cause of death in the hospital was written: "respiratory and circulatory failure death", I know what he meant, this is almost the most common diagnosis of death in the hospital, but it doesn't help us in any way , because any patient who dies will obviously stop breathing and heartbeat. There are a lot of possibilities listed below, such as heatstroke, septic shock, etc., are also hung with big question marks. It is estimated that the patient died too quickly, and they had no time to make too many checks.

Weicheng has already considered it belongs to the "sudden death syndrome of young and middle-aged people". The cause of death still meets the diagnostic criteria for this cause of death. But I still didn't want to give up the last ray of hope. I decided to find the doctor on duty and ask him every detail of the deceased before his death. Fortunately, the doctor on duty is not married yet, so he lives in a dormitory not far from the hospital. It may be because I often go looking for strangers. Although I only know an address, I found his residence almost without taking an extra step.

When I entered the dormitory, I realized that his room was like a stove—the kind of old-fashioned room with a corridor in the middle that hardly let in any drafts, and the location on the top floor made his room several degrees higher out of thin air. I almost didn’t say anything. Qing Laiyi asked him for water. Under his surprised gaze, I drank at least 1,500 milliliters of mineral water in one go, but they soon turned into sweat and flowed out. But the run was not in vain. The young doctor is wary of speaking about anything he's not sure about. I think now, many years later, maybe my cow drink frightened him, maybe he thought I was... But he described the whole process of death to me clearly: the patient's breathing gradually weakened and then stopped Heartbeat, he said: "I feel like the respiratory muscles are paralyzed, but I'm not sure why." Paralyzed respiratory muscles?It was apparently enough to kill.

I checked out all the diseases that may cause paralysis of the respiratory muscles, and did a lot of tests, but I was still disappointed. There was no evidence that the deceased was related to these diseases. A week later, my pathological slides finally came out. I could put the various organs of the deceased under the microscope to look for any tiny lesions, as I said before, but I still couldn't find any evidence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, but However, I found that the liver of the deceased had a large amount of hemosiderin left after the red blood cells were destroyed, and the kidney also left a large amount of protein left by the destroyed red blood cells. There will also be a lot of damaged red blood cell pigment in the fluid, which I later confirmed).

Minor damage—respiratory muscle paralysis—red blood cell hemolysis, when these three points were connected together, I finally seemed to see a ray of light, and I was already highly suspicious of the notorious venom, which everyone I've heard it all, and when I think of it, many people's hairs stand on end, but for me to write a conclusion with certainty, I have to visit the family of the deceased to find out all the details of what happened. After all, there are still some processes that cannot be explained. Like, why did the venom get into the dead man without him noticing? At noon the next day, I finally found the deceased's home on the first floor of a dilapidated residential complex. It was really a "home" lacking in femininity. I couldn't find a single ornament on the walls, the colors were pretty drab, and I couldn't find a single curved line in the room except for the dumbbell blocking the door, but it was surprisingly clean and tidy, and, Didn't smell a bit of alcohol. The child's eyes are very clear and innocent. Looking at the tidy room and the child's clear eyes, I suddenly understood why my father paid so much attention to his appearance. The child was his only hope in life, and he didn't want the child to see his poor and difficult life. In fact, before I came here, I was already highly suspicious of snake venom, especially cobra and king cobra, because snake venom is divided into blood circulation poison (viper, etc.) Before death, hemolysis (hemolytic toxicity) and respiratory muscle paralysis (nervous toxicity) are present at the same time, and only cobras, king cobras, and pit vipers possess both types of toxicity; blood circulation poisons are further divided into blood coagulation poisons , anticoagulant poison, hemorrhagic poison, and hemolytic poison, Agkistrodon halys mainly belong to blood coagulation poison and hemorrhagic poison, so after exclusion, only cobra and king cobra are left!However, when the child said that his father often killed snakes for him to eat, and bought a cobra for him to enter the university at noon on the day of the treat, I almost stood up!I can't get up, though, because I'm not done yet: snake venom is a protein, and if it's cooked and eaten, it's fine because the protein has coagulated. There is even a famous dish in Guangdong called "Snake Bites Chicken": the chicken is bitten to death by a poisonous snake and eaten after being boiled. Then the small injury on the father's hand must be the way for the snake venom to enter the body, but the question is, why the father who often kills snakes was bitten by a snake and didn't pay attention?Under my questioning, the child began to recall the process of his father killing the snake: when he was killing the snake that day, he was reading in another room, and suddenly heard the kitchen knife dropped on the floor, and the snake skin had already been peeled when he went to see it When I got down, my father was looking at his hands. When the father saw his son, he smiled and said, "It's okay, I'm not careful!" Then he went to work. When I heard all this, I thought my eyes and mouth must have become "O" shape, because the whole thing finally came to light - my father accidentally scratched on the fang after peeling off the snake's skin ( So there is a "..." shape behind the injury, and there is only one tooth mark), because I saw that the snake was dead, and there was no bleeding, I thought nothing would happen (the so-called "seeing blood seals the throat" in Chinese superstition) and continued to work The amount of snake venom is not large (snake venom exists in the teeth, but it is mainly stored in the venom gland), and it temporarily stays in the tissues around the wound without seeing blood; when the dinner party starts, the excitement and the effect of alcohol lead to blood circulation Speed ​​up, so the snake venom entered the blood circulation, and my father fell down!When I explained all this to the child, I didn't leave him right away, and I cooked a meal with him. When the dinner was over, the sun was about to set, and before going out, I stretched out my hand to the child. The child was obviously not used to the etiquette of adults, and shyly twitched; but I still waited firmly until he stretched out his hand, because I You know, he's already started his adult life. Tips Many netizens have suggested that they want to have a Sherlock Holmes addiction by themselves and solve the case by themselves. I think this is a good attempt, so first of all, I would like to introduce the general procedure or process of solving the case. Our country attaches the most importance to homicide cases. If it is determined to be a criminal case (of course, the forensic doctor must first rule out accidents, diseases, and suicides), the main leader is usually in command, and even a superior is listed to supervise the handling (I mentioned these in "A Rape Case"). Then there is a situation where various police departments cooperate: the forensic doctor is responsible for the inference of the cause of death (why he died) and the method of death (accident, disease, suicide, homicide); other criminal technicians are responsible for collecting such things as fingerprints, footprints, tool marks, etc. , evidence collection, laboratory testing; criminal investigators are responsible for work such as on-site video recording, inspection, interrogation of witnesses and suspects; They don't know much about their professional instruments, and the second is that their working methods are strictly confidential. Fortunately, when they are asked to play, the general criminal suspect already has a target, which has little effect on my storytelling), and then the arrest depends on the situation, and the police and armed police are all possible. It should be said that medical science is only one link in the chain of case detection work. Of course, I personally think that it is best for forensic doctors to know a little about these related working methods. First, it is conducive to mutual cooperation in the work, and second, it is conducive to the formation of an overall thinking. It's like a blind man touching an elephant. Therefore, I mentioned that I like to look at the vehicle that caused the accident first, which is the reason. Although generally speaking the sketches and photos of the scene will be placed in the case file, I personally think it is more rewarding to see the scene or the real thing. After all, different professions have different perspectives on issues. By the way, in poisoning cases, forensic doctors are most concerned about 1: the type of poison (what kind of poison); 2: the route of poisoning (how it enters the human body), and secondly, the source of the poison. You can think about the following poison cases along this line of thought. Recalling this case now still makes me feel a lot: the judgment of the cause of death should be both accidental and not accidental to me. The accident is because there is only one tooth mark, and there is no redness and swelling around the wound. I almost ignored it at first. The existence of tooth marks; if it is not accidental, it is because of the father in the article. Is it so strange that a person who is good at killing snakes dies in the mouth of poisonous snakes?Didn't our ancestors tell us that "a good swimmer dies from drowning"?But I didn’t stop there. First, I searched the Internet just now and found several articles about buying antivenom. It stands to reason that antivenom should be kept in stock at epidemic prevention stations at all levels, but our The drug supply chain is obviously not smooth due to various reasons. I want to say that at least the comrades at the epidemic prevention station should know where to buy this drug, right?I can remind everyone, especially friends in the south, that once you encounter this situation, you should first pay attention to what snake bit you, because it is related to the choice of different antivenoms, and secondly, the Shanghai Institute of Biological Products produces this drug . Second, there are about 50 species of venomous snakes in my country, but only a few kinds of antivenoms are produced. I guess the production of antivenom is not a hassle, and people can easily find it on the Internet, so what does that mean?
.Laughing.