324 NATURE AND LIFE. 
death, Prévost 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 Prévost’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 Prévost 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 chronie 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 
