DEATH BY DROWNING. 241 



too, appeared to be saturated and sodden with water, 

 which, stained slightly with blood, poured out at any 

 point where a section was made. The lung thus sodden 

 with water was heavy (though it floated), doughy, pitted 

 on pressure, and was incapable of collapsing. It is not 

 difficult to understand how, by such infarction of the tubes, 

 air is debarred from reaching the pulmonary cells : indeed 

 the inability of the lungs to collapse on opening the chest 

 is a proof of the obstruction which the froth occupying the 

 air-tubes offers to the transit of air. The entire depend- 

 ence of the early fatal issue, in apnoea by drowning, upon 

 the open condition of the windpipe, and its results, was 

 also strikingly shown by the following experiment. A 

 strong dog had its windpipe plugged, and was then sub- 

 merged in water for four minutes ; in three quarters of a 

 minute after its release it began to breathe, and in four 

 minutes had fully recovered. This experiment was re- 

 peated with similar results on other dogs. When the 

 entrance of water into the lungs, and its drawing up with 

 the air into the bronchial tubes by means of the respira- 

 tory efforts, were diminished, as by rendering the animal 

 insensible by chloroform previously to immersion, and thus 

 depriving it of the power of making violent respiratory 

 efforts, it was found that it could bear immersion for a 

 longer period without dying than when not thus rendered 

 insensible. Probably to a like diminution in the respira- 

 tory efforts, may also be ascribed the greater length of 

 time persons have been found to bear submersion without 

 being killed, when in a state of intoxication, poisoning by 

 narcotics, or during insensibility from syncope. 



It is to the accumulation of carbonic acid in the blood, 

 and its conveyance into the organs, that we must, 'in the 

 first place, ascribe the phenomena of asphyxia. For when 

 this does not happen, all the other conditions may exist 

 without injury ; as they do, for example, in hybernating 

 warm-blooded animals. In these, life is supported for 



