2 8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ganisni which may thus imitate death more or less closely ; the com- 

 monest one is that of fainting. In this case neither sensation nor 

 movements of circulation or respiration are any longer perceptible ; 

 the warmth is lowered, the skin pallid and colorless. Instances of 

 hysteria are cited in which the attack has heen prolonged for several 

 days, attended with fainting. In this strange condition all physiologi- 

 cal manifestations remain suspended ; yet they are not, as it was long 

 supposed, suspended absolutely. M. Bouchest has proved that, in the 

 gravest cases of fainting, the pulsations of the heart continue, weaker 

 and rarer, and harder to be heard than in normal life, but clearly dis- 

 tinguishable when the ear is laid on the precordial region. On the 

 other hand, the muscles retain their suppleness and the limbs their 

 pliability. 



Asphyxia, which properly is suspension of breathing, and conse- 

 quently of the blood's revivification, sometimes passes into a serious 

 fainting condition followed by seeming death, from which the sufferer 

 recovers after a period of varying length. This state may be induced 

 either by drowning or by inhaling a gas unfit for respiration, such as 

 carbonic acid in deep wells, emanations from latrines, or the choke- 

 damp of mines, or by suffocation. In 1650 a woman named Ann 

 Green was hanged at Oxford. She had been hanging for half an hour, 

 and several people, to shorten her suffering, had pulled her by the feet 

 with all their strength. After she was placed in her coffin it was ob- 

 served that she still breathed. The executioner's assistants attempted 

 to end her existence, but, thanks to the help of physicians, she came 

 back to life, and continued to live some time afterward. Drowning 

 occasions an equally deep insensibility, during which, very singularly, 

 the psychical faculties retain some degree of activity. Sailors, after 

 timely resuscitation from drowning, declare that, while under water, 

 they had returned in thought to their families, and sadly fancied the 

 grief about to be caused by their death. After a few minutes of phys- 

 ical rest, they suffered violent colic of the heart, which seemed to twist 

 itself about in their chests ; afterward this anguish was followed by 

 utter annihilation of consciousness. It is very difficult, moreover, to 

 determine how long apparent death may be protracted in an organism 

 under water. It varies greatly with temperaments. 



In the islands of the Greek archipelago, where the business of gath- 

 ering sponges from the bottom of the sea is pursued, children are not 

 allowed to drink wine until, by practice, they have grown accustomed 

 to remain a certain time under water. Old divers of the archipelago 

 say that the time to return and take breath at the surface is indicated 

 to them by painful convulsions of the limbs, and very severe contrac- 

 tions in the region of the heart. This power of enduring asphyxia for 

 some time, and resisting by force of will the movements of respiration, 

 has been remarked under other circumstances. The case of a Hindoo 

 is mentioned, who used to creep into the palisaded enclosures used for 



