An elderly woman drank herself to death by gulping gallons of water.

Former secretary Patricia Hall drank so much water her lungs weighed almost three times as much as a normal pair.

Her body could not cope with the volume of fluid and she collapsed in her bedroom where she was found slumped on the floor by her husband Michael, an inquest heard.

Mr Hall called the emergency services but his wife, 72, of Farlaine Road, Eastbourne, was frothing at the mouth by the time she arrived at Eastbourne District General Hospital where she died later the same day.

Mr Hall told the inquest at Eastbourne yesterday how he had noticed empty glasses collecting around his wife's chair in the run up to her death but he had not realised how much water she had been drinking.

He said: "She did drink a bit, she had three cups of coffee a day. She kept asking me for water and she had three glasses by her chair. This was a day or two before her death.

"We had tea together at three and then she left the room and went upstairs.

"She came down, then she stumbled across and put her hand out and banged her head on a bookcase."

He said his wife had had a swollen tongue in the days leading up to her death on New Year's Day.

Mrs Hall died after vital chemicals and solutions in her blood fell drastically and she developed pulmonary edema, or water on the lungs, in what is thought to be the first case of its kind in Britain.

The inquest comes two months after Brideshead Revisited star Anthony Andrews was taken to hospital in July with a salt imbalance after downing litres of water in a day.

Pathologist Dr Christopher Moffatt said Mrs Hall was diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia, a condition he believed may have over-ridden her ability to know when to stop drinking.

Dr Moffatt said Mrs Hall must have drunk gallons of fluid.

East Sussex Coroner Alan Craze recorded a verdict of accidental death.