THE FORGOTTEN BIT OF FULMINATE
IN experimenting with high explosives and in their
manufacture, a little absent-mindedness, a very
slight lack of exact caution, a seemingly insignificant
inadvertence for a moment, may cost one limb or
his life. The incident that cost me my left hand is
a case in point.
On the day preceding that accident, I had a gold
cap put on a tooth. In consequence, the tooth
ached and kept me awake the grater part of the
night. Next morning I rose early and went down
to my factory at Maxim, New Jersey. In order to test
the dryness of some fulminate compound I took
a little piece of it, about the size of an English penny,
broke off a small particle, placed it on a stand
outside the laboratory, and, lighting a match, touched
it off. Owing to my loss of sleep the night before, my
mind was not so alert as usual, and I forgot to lay
aside the remaining piece of fulminate compound,
but, instead, held it in my left hand. A spark from
the ignited piece entered my left hand between my
fingers, igniting the piece there, with the result that
my hand was blown off to the wrist, and the next
thing I saw was the bare end of the wrist bone. My
face and clothes were bespattered with flesh and filled
with slivers of bone. . . . The following day, my thumb
was found on the top of a building a couple of hundred
feet away, with a sinew attached to it, which had
been pulled out from the elbow.
A tourniquet was immediately tightened around
my wrist to prevent the flow of blood, and I and
two of my assistants walked half a mile down to
the railroad, where we tried to stop an upgoing
train with a red flag. But it ran the flag down
and went on, the engineering thinking, perhaps,
from our wild gesticulations that we were highwaymen.
We then walked another half-mile to a farmhouse,
where a horse and wagon were procured. Thence
I was driven to Farmingdale, four and a half miles
distant, where I had to wait two hours for the next
train to New York.
The only physician in the town was an invalid, ill with
tuberculosis. I called on him while waiting, and condoled
with him, as he was much worse off then was I.
On arrival in New York, I was taken in a carriage
to the elevated station at the Brooklyn Bridge.
On reaching my station at Eighty-fourth Street,
I walked four blocks, and then up four flights of
stairs to my apartments on Eighty-second
street, where the surgeon was awaiting me.
It was now evening, and the accident has occurred
at half-past ten o'clock in the morning. That was
a pretty hard day!
As I had no electric lights in the apartments, only gas,
the surgeon declared that it would be dangerous to
administer ether, and the must, therefore, chloroform
me. He added that there was no danger in using
chloroform, if the patient had a strong heart. Thereupon
I asked him to examine my heart, since, if there should
be the least danger of my dying under the influence of the
anesthetic, I wanted to make my will.
"Heart!" exclaimed the surgeon, with emphasis.
"A man who has gone through what you have gone
through today hasn't any heart!" The next day I
dictated letters to answer my correspondence as
usual. The young woman stenographer, who took
my dictation, remarked with a sardonic smile:
"You, too, have now become a shorthanded writer."
The grim jest appealed to my sense of humor.
On the third day I was genuinely ill and had no
wish to do business. Within ten days, however,
I was out again, attending to my affairs.
Hudson Maxim Dynamite Stories 1916
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