The medical reports?!

[j.r-ahde]

Hello you all!

I thought to start a thread like this here;


We know, that Annie Chapman had TB. Gone so much forward, that she would have died within two weeks anyway.

But, besides the coroner's reports, are there any other records about this remained anywhere?

All the best
Jukka

[Doctor X]

Help the Newbie . . . how is it known that she would have died within two weeks?

Yours truly,

--J.D.

[sdreid]

I'd heard that she probably wouldn't have lived much longer but I hadn't heard that death was that imminent. I guess it's possible.

[Doctor X]

Well, if she had tuberculous meningitis--based on the description of the autopsy report--she could have had a subacute course. The question is how florid and how symptomatic she was. This can go on for a few weeks with various symptoms such as headache, lethargy, and confusion. To my knowledge, she has not been reported as suffering from these symptoms. Granted, the fact it is not documented does not mean it did not happen. Those symptoms can appear before the critical symptoms and signs of what is known as "meningismus," or meningeal irritation--"meningitis." This would include a stiff neck with other signs of irritation that I am unaware of her having. Meningismus certainly would have made prostitution a bit difficult.

However, once she developed such symptoms, her progress to death would have been within the month if not sooner. There were no effective treatments for tuberculous meningitis that I am aware of--my Google-Fu found references to the 1950s for really effective treatment--and even today death invariably occurs in the absence of effective treatment within 4-8 weeks.

Given the suggestion of meningeal involvement in the autopsy report, it was probably a matter of time even if she did not yet show the symptoms and signs. Jack sent her across the River of Styx about a month to maybe a month and a half earlier than her scheduled departure.

Though . . . it is possible she got caught right before her decline and she would have died within the two weeks!

Yours truly,

--J.D.