546 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



rest almost without breathing. While much of this may be im- 

 posture, there are, according to Rousselet and Jacolliot, some well- 

 authenticated cases of the kind. English sentinels were set 

 around one fakir who was buried alive. When disinterred he was 

 apparently dead, but was aroused and lived. I do not consider it 

 necessary to question the correctness of the cases of lethargy and 

 apparent death recorded in the books. A considerable depression 

 of the nervous system accompanies all such phenomena, and the 

 activity of the heart and the rhythm of respiration disappear at a 

 certain stage of the disease. 



There have not been many experiments on this subject made 

 upon men. We have one, however, from M. Debove, on the influ- 

 ence of suggestion upon hysterics. On his indication to two 

 patients that they should not eat or drink, they comfortably sup- 

 ported a fast of fifteen days, with only slightly proportionate de- 

 crease of weight, and they had had hardly any feeling of hunger 

 at the end of the period. For comparison, M. Debove tried to im- 

 pose a fast on a vigorous man, but was obliged to suspend it after 

 five days. This subject lost at the rate of 0'8 gramme per kilo- 

 gramme per hour, against 0'13 gramme in the hysterical patients. 

 He was not susceptible to suggestion. 



We draw from these facts that the functional exchanges are 

 retarded in cases of hysteria. We do not yet know the exact influ- 

 ence of the nervous system. There is certainly a diminution of 

 chemical activity in the tissues which produce heat and in the 

 glands that furnish the secretions. This is not saying much, but 

 it is something. Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from 

 the Revue Scientifique. 



-- 



SKETCH OF JAMES GLAISHER, F. R. S. 



METEOROLOGY owes to Mr. Glaisher the results of many 

 years of patient labor at the institutions and observatories 

 with which he has been connected ; a series of valuable researches 

 undertaken at the instance of the British Association ; and those 

 daring and brilliant observations in a balloon at very great 

 heights in the atmosphere with which his name is most con- 

 spicuously associated. Yet, as has been observed by one of his 

 biographers, " his numerous contributions to scientific and popu- 

 lar literature, often published in a most unobtrusive manner, 

 which is very characteristic of the man, have scarcely gained him 

 so wide a reputation in the learned world as he certainly de- 

 served." 



James Glaisher was born, according to the " Men of the Time/' 

 in London in 1809. In 1829, as assistant in the principal trian- 



