48 FEDERAL REPORTER. .
ceased falling in the water from sudden insensibility was an accident,
and consequently that our judgment must be for the plaintiff." It
is to be observed of this case that it has only a general application
to the question under consideration, because the proviso in the policy
contained no such condition as we have here in relation to disease
as a cause, in whole or in part, of death.
[n the Winspear Case the facts were that W. effected an insur-
ance with the defendants against accidental injury, and by the terms
of the policy the defendants agreed to pay the amou`nt insured to W.’s
legal representatives, should he sustain "any personal injury caused
by accidental, external, and visible means," and the direct eject of
such injury should cause his death. The policy also contained a
proviso that the insurance should not extend "to any injury caused
by or arising from natural disease or weakness, or exhaustion con-
sequent upon disease, "‘ * * or to any death arising from disease,
although such death may have been accelerated by accident." During the
time the policy was in force, and while W. was crossing a stream, he
was seized by an epileptic fit, and fell into the stream, and was
drowned while sujering from the fit, but he did not sustain any per-
sonal injury to occasion death other than drowning. Here it was
argued that there would have been no drowning had the insured not
had an epileptic fit; that it was the fit which caused the drowning;
and that the death, therefore, was from an injury caused by the fit;
just as it is argued in the case at bar that there would have been no
suicide had the insured not beeninsanef that it was the insanity
which caused the suicide, and that, therefore, the death was from an
injury caused by insanity. But Lord Connmnom, C. J., said:
"I am of opinion that this judgment should be affirmed, and that on very
plain grounds. It appears to be clear from the statement in this case that the
insured died from drowning in the waters of the brook, while in an epileptic
tit, and drowning has been decided to be an injury because, in the words of
this policy, caused by * accidental, external, and visible means} I am, there·
fore, of opinion that the injury from which he died was a risk covered by
this policy; and the only question, then, remaining is whether the case is
within the proviso which provides that the insurance ‘shall not extend to
death by suicide, whether felonious or otherwise, or to any injury caused
by or arising from natural disease or weakness or exhaustion consequent
upon disease} It is certainly not within the first part of this proviso because
the death was not so occasioned. Neither does it appear to me that the cause
of death was within those latter words of the proviso. The death was not
caused by any natural disease, or weakness or exhaustion consequent upon
disease, but by the accident of drowning. I am of opinion that those
words in the proviso mean what they say, and that they point to an injury
caused by natural disease; as if, for instance, in the present case, epilepsy
had really been the cause of the death. The death, however, did not arise
from any such cause, and those words have no application to the case, and
therefore the judgment of the exchequer division must be affirmed. "
This case, in its facts and upon principle, appears to be directly
in point; for if there the death was not in a legal sense caused by i