passes into the windpipe, is covered by an accident insurance policy which provides that the insurer's liability shall only attach when the injury is through "external, violent, and accidental means." The Court said : — "That the death of the insured was accidental is con ceded, but it is contended that the contract of insurance only embraces accidental injuries caused by external violence, or accidents brought about by means externally violent. It is argued that the act of chewing or eating food is natural and harmless, and if in eating, a part of the food passes into the windpipe, causing death, it cannot be said that death was produced by means of external violence or force; in other words, that the plain meaning of the language of the policy, ' through external, violent, and accidental means,' is that the accident causing death must have been caused by an external force. The very object of insuring in such companies is to obtain indemnity where injury or death results from accident; and while the policy provides that the liability arises when the injury ' is through external, violent, and accidental means, in dependently of all other causes,' it was not designed that there should be such external violence as a fall, a kick, or a blow, on the person, as would cause death or an injury, before the liability of the company could arise. This language was inserted in the contract to protect the com pany against hidden or secret diseases, resulting in injury, where there was no manifestation of harm to the external body. They were not attempting to restrict their liability to a particular kind of accidents, but were guarding the contract by the use of such terms as would prevent liability for injuries not originating from accidentia! causes, and that were liable to occur at any time from natural causes. If the steak had been putrid, causing the stomach to revolt at it, or so tough as to interfere with digestion, or to completely stay the operations of nature in such a manner as to produce disease, no one would contend that the pain or the disease was the result of accident, or that the terms of this policy embraced such a case; but when the substance causing the death is visible, and placed in the mouth of the assured, lodging by accident in the windpipe, instead of the stomach, producing injury or death, it is as much an accident as if the assured had taken arsenic under the belief that it was some harmless medi cine. There is no external force or violence from the poison, and the injury internal in its character, and yet the authorities hold that the insurance company is liable in such a case. Healey v. Mutual Ace. Asso. 133 Ill. 556, 9 L. R. A. 371. It is plain, we think, that the means or that which caused the injury should be external, and not that the injury should have been external. It is said, however, that if the injury is not to be ex ternal, the death must have resulted from * violent and accidental means.' It is universally understood, when it is said that one died a violent death, that it was unnatural, — a death not occurring in the ordinary way; and, in fact, the def1nition of the word 'violent' is 'unnatural,' and in using this word the insurance company was attempting to prevent the assured from asserting a claim when the injury or death was the result of some natural cause. In the case of Paul v. Travelers Ins. Co., 112 N.Y. 472, 3 L. R. A.
443, on a similar policy, it was held ' that a death unnatural, the result of accident, imports an external and violent agency as the cause.' This same view was taken by the Illinois Supreme Court in the case of Healey v. Mutual Ace. Asso. already cited. A similar construction to the verbiage of like policies has been heretofore given by courts of last resort, and if companies organized as this is intend that actual external force causing the accident must be shown before a recovery could be had, it would be easy to so frame the language of the policy as to leave no doubt as to its meaning."
Fouling a Stream. — A rather novel question of rights in watercourses was decided in Barnard v. Shirley, Supreme Court of Indiana, June 6, 1893, holding that persons using the water of an ar tesian well to bathe patients at a sanitarium, the well and sanitarium being on their own premises, are not liable to an adjoining owner for allowing the water so polluted to flow into a stream which is the natural watercourse of the basin in which the well is situ ated; there being no negligence or malice, and all due care being used to avoid injury. The Court said : — "The natural right to have the water of a stream in its pure state must yield to the equal right of those above. Their use of the stream for mill purposes and the other manifold purposes for which they may lawfully use it will tend to render it more or less impure. The water may thus be rendered unlit for many uses for which it had before been suitable; but so far as that condition results from a reasonable use of the stream in accordance with the common right, the lower riparian proprietor has no remedy. When the population becomes dense, and towns or villages gather along the banks, the stream naturally suffers still greater deterioration. Against such injury, incident as it is to the growth and industrial prosperity of the community, the law affords no redress. So in cities and towns, with their numerous inhabitants and diver sified business, with their mills, shops, and manufactories, with their streets and sewers, all the products and means of a high civilization, it would be impossible that the pure streams that flow in from the farmsides should remain uncontaminated; and those that live upon the lower banks of such streams must, for the general good, abide the necessary results of such causes. Merrifield v. City of Worcester, 11o Mass. 216. "In the case before us the stream flowed through the heart of the city of Martinsville before it reached the lands of appellee. Will it be said that there is any liability for contamination from the city? Must it be that one who lives on the lower lands on the banks of a stream shall forbid forever the founding of a city on the lands above, forbid the grading of streets, the building of sewers, the erection of mills, factories, hospitals, or other means of livelihood, comfort and convenience of the inhabitants? A case in many of its features resembling that now before the court is the well considered case of Coal Co. v. San derson, 113 Pa. St. 126.
