Julius Mount Bleyer

Julius Mount Bleyer (16 March 1859 – 3 April 1915) was a New York doctor who specialized in laryngology who took a keen interest in medical jurisprudence. He studied the methods used for capital punishment and as a member of a commission, was among the first to propose lethal injections in 1888.[1] He pointed out in The Medico-Legal Journal, the problems with other methods of executing death sentences including decapitation and electrocution.[2] Lethal injections were however not used until the early 1980s.

Bleyer was also a pioneer of photofluoroscopy, a method of visualizing x-rays to observe the functioning of internal organs.[3][4][5] He also introduced the idea of an inhaler for delivering medication into the lungs[6] and considered applications in laryngology that made use of sound recording instruments.[7]

  1. ^ Bleyer, J. Mount (1888). "Best Method of Executing Criminals". Medico-Legal Journal. 5: 425–441.
  2. ^ Bleyer, J. Mount (1898). "Instant death by decapitation an impossibility according to biological analysis". Medico Legal Journal. 16: 515–532.
  3. ^ Glasser, Otto (1993). Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen and the Early History of the Roentgen Rays. Normal Publishing. p. 243.
  4. ^ Bleyer, J. Mount (1896). "On the photo-fluoroscope". The Laryngoscope. 1 (1): 9–20. doi:10.1288/00005537-189607000-00001. S2CID 72560648.
  5. ^ Ramsey, L.J. (1983). "Early cineradiography and cinefluorography". History of Photography. 7 (4): 311–322. doi:10.1080/03087298.1983.10442029.
  6. ^ Bleyer, J. Mount (1890). "A new method of larygeal and bronchial medication by means of a spray and tube during the act of deep inspiration. Read in the Section of Laryngology and Otology at the Forty-first Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, Nashville, Tenn., May, 1890". Journal of the American Medical Association. 15 (18): 634–636. doi:10.1001/jama.1890.02410440006001a.
  7. ^ Bleyer, J. Mount (1895). "The Phonograph: Its Physics, Physiology, and Clinical Import". The Journal of Laryngology, Rhinology, and Otology. 1: 1–17. doi:10.1017/S1755146300152473. S2CID 59508334.