Medicine: Death in the Hospital

Mrs. Marion duMont, 55, was not seriously ill when she checked into Newton-Wellesley Hospital of Newton, Mass, one day last week. She was to be X-rayed for backache next day, so it seemed convenient to check in and get a good rest the night before. Mrs. duMont and her husband had hardly settled down for a chat when a nurse came in, started to give Mrs. duMont an injection, then discovered that she had the wrong patient. Another nurse entered with a jigger of medicine and a glass of water. "How do you know this is right?" Robert duMont asked. "You've got to trust someone," said his wife, and gulped it down.

An instant later Mrs. duMont blanched, tried to speak but could not. Her lips turned blue. Minutes later she was dead. A few doors away, at almost the same time, Gordon M. McMullin, 53, died in the same way. Quick autopsies showed that both patients had been dosed with sodium nitrite, a powerful poison used as a hospital cleansing agent, instead of sodium phosphate, a mild cathartic. Shocked hospital authorities refused to explain the matter until they had made an investigation, but the district attorney's office, opening a full-scale inquiry, indicated that an employee of the hospital pharmacy had been temporarily transferred to other work. He apparently had reached for the wrong container.