Suspended Animation by drowning. 1 25 



powerful on the left ear for three or four hours. It caused in the head a ring- 

 ing like the ringing of tumblers. The residue of the family, three children, 

 were in bed in the chanibers, and not otherwise affected than by a start by 

 the report. 



A neighbour six rods distant standing at his door was stunned and falling, 

 but was caught by his family. 



Another family in a small building two rods distant only affected by the 

 report — at the north-West corner of the room, a large heavy table and 

 chair moved two feet from the wall, the whole ceiling started. The fluid 

 passed down after leaving my body, between the sill and a stone step through 

 the wall and four feet downwards throwing off much pointing. The dotted 

 line the south side shews the course of the fluid on the cellar wall — the residue 

 its course on the sill, floor or plank on the north side, west on the ground in- 

 juring the house and furniture more or less. I had been out in a little dash 

 of rain ten minutes before the shock — the clothes were moist. 



Several strokes of lightning apparently from the same explo- 

 sion. 



Extract of a letter to the Editor from Gen. Ephkaim Hoyt, 



dated, 



Deerfeld, Mass. July, 21, 1821. 



One question in Electricity and I have done. Have you 

 any certain proofs that lightning strikes at several places 

 (say from twenty to forty rods distance) at the same instant. 

 In a late thunder shower a tree in my garden three rods 

 from my house, a post in a fence twenty rods distant and 

 a walnut tree in the meadow forty rods distant were struck 

 as we suppose at the same instant. The shock was tre- 

 mendous, and I believe the tree in my garden saved my 

 house and probably our lives. I am of opinion that the 

 lightning ascended. I am sometimes puzzled to account 

 for Electrical Phenomena on known laws and am not cer- 

 tain of the efficacy of rods though 1 believe them useful in 

 many cases. 



Art, XVI. — Rplation of a case of suspended animation by 

 drowning ; by Lockwood W. Smith. 



Read at the annual examination in the Medical Institution of Yale College j 

 March, 1822. 



I have selected this as a subject for the present disserta- 

 tion. First, because it came under my own observation. — 



