My mother told me this when I was little, and from that point it has troubled me. If I had a tablespoon of water in my bathtub, there wouldn’t be much chance of me drowning in it. Once I got my feet in, sat down, there wouldn’t be much left to drown in.
So, what then, means this phrase?
I checked my trusty Google, and came up but with one relevant link Not much help here
So what is the true origin of this cautionary phrase? If you swallow your drink the wrong way, could it get into your lungs and drown you? All those times I’ve coughed, and declared “It went down the wrong tube” was I at risk of death? Should we all be training our children to drink more carefully, or have I been fretting about this unnecessarily?
Yes, this is what is meant by the phrase “drown in a tablespoon of water”. I wonder, though, if a tablespoon really is enough to overtake the lungs before coughing could kick in.
This is a WAG, but I would imagine that the coughing reflex would kick in before a whole tablespoon of liquid could be inhaled. Perhaps if, theoretically, you were able to inhale the whole tablespoon, you would drown? I, too, would appreciate commentary from someone well-informed.
Jeff
I came across the phrase in a book of Jewish folklore.
“If it is a man’s destiny to drown, he will drown even in a tablespoon of water.”
The message is obviously about destiny, not drowning.
The inescapable destiny was a large part of many cultures. Oedipus is the most obvious example. The idea is central to Norse mythology. Ragnarok will come and nothing can change that.
The lungs should be able to cope with a mere 15 cc of water without getting seriously oxygen deprived. Their absorptive surface is quite large, and if the water is fresh, should certainly be taken up readily thru the alveoli into the more saline plasma.
OTOH, very salty water would tend to draw more fluids into the lungs from the capillary bed. Perhaps 15 cc of very salty water would be enough to draw fluids into the lungs to drown someone? Hmmm. I’ll have to experiment some.
[joke mode]Gosh, sometimes its good to work in a prison![/joke mode]
Some of the work I do involves operating x-ray equipment during endoscopy procedures. Usually, the doctor injects a numbing agent via the 'scope while taking biopsies. Although I’ve never counted the ml’s, I’m pretty certain that more than a tablespoon is used.
If I recall correctly from my reading of the Encyclopedia of Forensic Medicine years ago, the closing off of the trachea by the body is diagnostic of drowning. Fluid can be found in the lungs of bodies immersed subsequent to death by other causes.
don’t ask, that was a little more readable than the other source. So you don’t just have to have a tablespoon of water in your lungs to drown, you could have no water in your lungs? The article talks about drowning in home pools, ponds, ditches, old septic tanks, and buckets. Presumably though, these all have more than a tablespoon of water in them.
Is there anything else that would cause your body to close off the trachea other than being submerged in water? From don’t ask’s link: Seizure disorders increase the risk of drowning, and hypothermia may lead to drowning. But it still doesn’t say you could drown without being submerged in water.
You’re right, by definition you can only drown if you have been submerged in fluid. “Submerged” would only mean that your mouth and nose were underwater. Other factors increase your risk of drowning by making you more likely to suffer laryngospasm due to submersion. Never the less it is the laryngospasm that causes the asphyxia no matter how little water is inhaled. In 80-90% of cases the laryngospasm stops and water is aspirated creating a “wet” drowning. This makes my assertion about the laryngospasm being diagnostic of drowning seem pretty dodgy, I don’t know how you could tell that a body had previously had a laryngospasm.
How about being stung by a bee and suffering anaphylactic shock (an allergic reaction where your throat swells to the point it cuts of breathing), while at the same time you being to vomit.
You effectively drown by choking on your own vomit.
No external water source.
Sure you could call it death by choking, but quite a few drownings occuring where fluid in the trachea prevents breathing.