402 THK DISEASES AND DISORDERS OP THE OX. 



shipwreck, or an earthquake, or a fire, or a battle, or an explosion 

 in a mine, or a combination of some of these. Of such calamities, 

 perhaps the panic and deadly struggles at the places of exit 

 which led to the loss of so many lives at the terrible fire which 

 so recently occurred at the Opera Comique, in Paris, is most 

 fresh in men's minds. 



Now, how did the unfortunate victims of that horrible and 

 tragic occurrence meet with their piteous fate ? We read that 

 some of those who died succumbed to poisoning by monoxide of 

 carbon, the gas which is generated when charcoal or other com- 

 bustible substance containing carbon is burnt in an atmosphere 

 containing a supply of oxygen insufficient to make it possible 

 that the higher oxide of carbon should be produced in full 

 quantity. Probably the majority were suff*ocated owing to the 

 want of oxygen, and the presence of a great deal of smoke 

 together with carbonic acid gas and other gases. Finally, a few 

 seemed to have died owing to actual failure of the heart's action, 

 due to shock, and intense terror, and fear of the pain of inevitable 

 death. Probably all escaped the horrible pain of actually being 

 burnt alive, though many were reduced to ashes in the sweeping 

 conflagration which ensued. 



Mark : some were so panic-stricken with the vivid reality of a 

 sure, unavoidable, and imminent loss of that life which we all of 

 us cling to, despite all the miseries of living, so maddened with 

 mental agony that in the unimaginable horror of their sudden 

 and startling situation their hearts did literally stand still and 

 motionless ; and thus these doomed human beings were plunged, 

 by probably a painless path, from the very height of merry 

 enjoyment, all sparkling with beauty and fashion, and full of the 

 thousand and one thoughts of nineteenth-century enlightenment, 

 into the chasm of the future world ; shall we say transported to a 

 height of happiness and bliss, or a depth of maddening and ever- 

 enduring despair ? or shall we say, into the sweet sleep of 

 eternal oblivion ? 



Truly it is a shocking picture, this which is presented to our 

 minds, a vision to make us all think most deeply; and though 

 we can account in some measure for the means whereby so much 

 life ceased to flow on in its even course, though we can in some 

 infinitesimal degree realise what that terror must have 'been like 

 which was felt by those human beings all decked out in the com- 



