324 NATURE AND LIFE. 



death, Provost uttered a cry, and did then die in earnest. 

 But it has since been proved that the story is imaginary, 

 and that it was made up after Provost's death ; nor do any 

 of the necrological accounts published at the time refer it 

 to the consequences of a premature autopsy. Though the 

 account of Prevost dissected alive seems doubtful, that is 

 not the case with the story told with regard to an opera- 

 tion by the famous accoucheur, Philip Small. A woman, 

 about to be confined, fell into a state of seeming death. 

 Small relates that when he was summoned to perform the 

 Cesarean operation, the by-standers, convinced that the 

 woman was dead, urged him to proceed with it. " I sup- 

 posed so, too," he says, " for I felt no pulse in the region 

 of the heart, and a glass held over her face showed no sign 

 of respiration." Then he plunged his knife into the body, 

 and was cutting among the bleeding tissues, when the 

 subject awoke from her lethargy. 



We cite some still more startling instances. Thirty 

 years ago, a resident of the village of Eymes, in Dordogne, 

 had been suffering for a long time from a chronic disorder 

 of little consequence in itself, but marked by the distressing 

 symptom of constant wakefulness, which forbade the pa- 

 tient any kind of rest. Worn out with this condition, he 

 consulted a doctor, who prescribed opium, advising great 

 caution in its use. The invalid, possessed with that com- 

 mon-enough notion that the efficacy of a drug is propor- 

 tioned to its quantity, took at one time a dose sufficient 

 for several days. He soon fell into a deep sleep, which 

 continued unbroken for more than twenty-four hours. The 

 village doctor, being summoned, finds the body without 

 warmth, the pulse extinct, and, on opening the veins of 

 both arms in succession, obtains but a few drops of thick 

 blood. The day after, they prepared for his burial. But, 

 a few days later, closer inquiry revealed the imprudence 

 the poor wretch had committed in taking an excessive 



