Today’s Oil-Covered Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
A hot spring fatality occurred in the West Thumb Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park on August 24, 1926. At about 8:00 p.m., the Reverend Gilbert A. Eakins, 27, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Saratoga, Wyoming, accompanied by his wife Patti, small son, and parents from Bourbon, Indiana, were walking around the thermal area when Rev. Eakins slipped and fell into an unspecified hot spring. In attempting to get out of the pool, he backed into another one. Confused by the pain from hot water, he lost his footing and fell headlong into the first pool. He was completely immersed but managed to crawl from the spring unaided. Eakins remained conscious to the end, but he died from shock on the way to the Mammoth hospital.
Ranger Wendell Keate, a doctor, was nearby at the road-crew bunkhouse when he heard screams and cries for help. Keate ran to the geyser basin behind Mr. Halstead, a government truck driver:
When I arrived… I observed a man staggering through the trees toward the road and screaming at the top of his voice for help, that he had fallen into a pool and was burned all over. Calling to Halstead who was holding him, not to handle him roughly, I took hold of the man and asking Halstead for his knife, laid the man on his back and proceeded to cut away his clothing as carefully as possible for I could see even in that dim light that the skin had been slipped from large areas on his body and extremities.
In two minutes a large crowd had been attracted to the scene including all the employees of the road camp and the camping company. While I was cutting away his clothing I asked for a comforter to lay him on so as not to get any foreign material into the areas which were burned. By this time my wife arrived with the car and Ranger Miller with my medicine kit. As soon as his clothing was all removed I administered one half grain of morphine. I commandeered all the olive oil and cooking oils from the delicatessen and the road camp. Mrs. Evens of the road camp had three pints of olive oil with which I covered the entire body and then obtained two clean sheets from the camping company. I wrapped Mr. Eakins in them so that the trunk and extremities were completely covered then soaked the sheets in oil. I gave mineral oil by mouth to relieve the burning which the esophagus and trachea had sustained when the victim had gulped hot water into his mouth and had swallowed it.
The fact that Eakins’ head was submerged increased his certainty of death, because his burns were then nearly as bad internally as externally due to swallowing hot water.
Culled from: Death In Yellowstone
Of course we now know that putting oil on burns actually makes the burns worse because it traps the heat in the tissues, but Keate thought he was helping. It probably didn’t matter in the end anyway…