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NATURE 



[May 29, 1879 



There seems in cold-blooded animals so circumstanced 

 to be no recognisable limit of time after which they 

 may not recover, but there is much skill required in 

 promoting the recovery. If in thawing them the 

 utmost care be not taken to thaw gradually, and 

 at a temperature always below the natural living 

 temperature of the animal, the fluids of the animal will 

 pass from the frozen state through the aqueous into the 

 pectous so rapidly that death from pectous change will 

 be pronounced without perceiving any intermediate or 

 life-stage at all. In warm-blooded animals it is extremely 

 difficult to restore animation after suspension of life by 

 cold, owing to the fact that in their more complex and 

 differently-shielded organs, it is next to impossible to 

 thaw equally and simultaneously all the colloidal fluids. 

 In very young animals it can be done. Young kittens, a 

 day or two old, that have been drowned in ice cold water, 

 will recover after two hours' immersion almost to a cer- 

 tainty, if brought into a dry air at a temperature of gS" F. 

 The gentlest motion of the body will be sufficient to re- 

 start the respiration and therewith the life. 



The nearest approach we see naturally to this state is 

 in hybernating animals. In them the effects of cold in 

 the season for hybernation and the recovery from the 

 torpor are seen even in matured and old animals. In 

 hybernation, however, there is not produced the complete 

 stage of passive efficiency. There is in them a slow re- 

 spiration and a low stage of active efficiency of circula- 

 tion. The hybernating animal sleeps only ; and while 

 sleeping it consumes or wastes, and, if the cold be pro- 

 longed, it may die from wasting. From the sleep of 

 hybernation also the animal can be roused by the common 

 methods used for waking a sleeper, so that animation is 

 not positively suspended. 



Returning to the extreme effects of cold on animal 

 bodies, it is hard to say whether an animal like a fish, 

 frozen equally through all its structures, is actually dead, 

 in the strict sense of the word, seeing that if it be uni- 

 formly and equally thawed it may recover from a 

 perfect glacial state. In like manner it may be doubted 

 whether a healthy warm-blooded animal, suddenly 

 and equally frozen through all its parts, is dead, al- 

 though it is not recoverable, because, in the very act of 

 trying to restore it, some inequality in the direction is 

 almost sure to determine a fatal issue owing to the 

 transition of some vital centre into the pectous state 

 of colloidal matter. I do not, consequently, see that 

 cold can be of itself and alone utilized for maintaining 

 suspended animation in the larger warm-blooded ani- 

 mals of full growth. At the same time cold will, for a 

 long time, maintain, ready for motion, active organs 

 locally subjected to it. Even after death this effect of it 

 may be locally demonstrated, and has sometimes been 

 so demonstrated to the wonder of the world. On 

 January 17, in the year 1803, Aldini, the nephew of 

 Galvani, created the greatest astonishment in London 

 by a series of experiments which he conducted on a 

 malefactor, twenty-six years old, named John Forster, 

 who was executed at Newgate, and whose body, an hour 

 after execution, was delivered over to Mr. Keate, Master 

 of the College of Surgeons, for research. The body had 

 been exposed for an hour to an atmosphere two degrees 

 below freezing-point, and from that cause, though Aldini 

 does not seem to have recognized the fact, the voluntary 

 muscles retained their irritability to such a degree that 

 ■when Aldini began to pass voltaic currents through the 

 body some of the bystanders seem to have concluded 

 that the unfortunate malefactor had come again to life. 

 It is significant also that Aldini, in his report, says that 

 his object was not to produce re-animation, but to obtain 

 a practical knowledge how far galvanism might be em- 

 ployed as an auxiliary to revive pei sons who were acci- 

 dently suffocated, as though he himself were in some 

 doubt. 



In repeating Aldini' s experiments on lower animals 

 that had passed into death under chloroform, with the 

 view of determining what is the best treatment for those 

 human beings who sink under chloroform and other 

 ansesthetics, I failed altogether to obtain the same results 

 when the temperature of the day was high. Noticing 

 this, I experimented at or below freezing-point, and then 

 found that both by the electrical discharge and by injec- 

 tion of water heated to 130° F. into the muscles through 

 the arteries, active muscular movements could be pro- 

 duced in warm-blooded animals many hours after death. 

 Thus, for lecture experiment I have removed one muscle 

 from the body of an animal that had slept to death from 

 chloroform, and, putting the muscle in a glass tube sur- 

 rounded with ice and salt, I have kept it for several days 

 in a condition for its making a final muscular contrac- 

 tion, and, by gently thawing it, have made it, in the act 

 of final contraction, do some mechanical work, such as 

 moving a long needle balanced on the face of a dial, or 

 discharging a pistol. 



In muscles so removed from the body and preserved 

 ready for motion, there is, however, only one final act. 

 For, as the blood and nervous supply are both cut off 

 from it, there is nothing left in it but the reserve some- 

 thing that was fixed by the cold ; but I do not see any 

 reason why this should not be maintained in reservation 

 for weeks or months, as easily as for days, in a fixed cold 

 atmosphere. 



Besides cold there are other agencies which hold the 

 colloidal fluids in the aqueous state, and which, while 

 they suspend the motor function, suspend without neces- 

 sarily destroying life. Several agents of this class have 

 been discovered. 



Mandragora. — The first known of these suspending 

 agents was mandragora. This was known as far back 

 as Dioscorides. Dioscorides states that this vegetable 

 substance may be administered in such a manner that 

 the signs of active life may disappear, and sensibility be 

 so far destroyed that the physician or surgeon may operate 

 on the temporarily insensible without producing pain. 

 The suspension of life from mandragora may extend over 

 some hours, and the use of the agent probably was con- 

 tinued until the twelfth or thirteenth century. From the 

 action of it doubtless comes the Shakespearian legend of 

 Juliet. In modern times I have made the wine of man- 

 dragora, and found that it has the power originally attri- 

 buted to it of suspending without destroying active life. 

 The wine from it was the morion of the ancients, the 

 fluid probably that was used by the Jewish women in the 

 times of the Sanhedrim to destroy the sufferings of those 

 who were under torture, and sometimes, perchance, to 

 deceive the executioner and prevent the deadliness of his 

 task. 



The plant from which morion was originally made, 

 the Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), has, in 

 this country, similar properties to its ally the Atropa 

 mandragora. In 185 1 I attended at Mortlake two 

 children who were poisoned for a time from eating the 

 berries and chewing the leaves of the nightshade which 

 they had gathered near to Richmond. The children were 

 brought home insensible, and they lay in a condition of 

 suspended life for seven hours, the greatest care being 

 required to detect either the respiration or the movements 

 of the heart. They nevertheless recovered. 



Nitrite of Amy I. — In my original researches on the 

 nitrite of amyl, one of the observations which most sur- 

 prised me was the power of this agent to suspend anima- 

 tion. In the report I made to the British Association in 

 1864 on this subject, I showed that the life of the frog might 

 be suspended for the period of nine days, and yet recovery 

 to full and rigorous life might follow ; that the same 

 power of suspension, in a lesser degree, could be produced 

 in warm-blooded animals, and that the heart of a warm- 

 blooded animal would contract for the period of eighteen 



