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takes; and, after enjoying this state of repose for some time, 
suddenly faints, or is seized with a convulsion, and expires. 
Our learned narrator leads us from these facts, which with 
him are personal experiences, to teach us that all through the 
literary history of the science of medicine similar facts are re- 
corded. Hippocrates is adduced by him as telling of the 
symptoms of death in similar cases, and as closing his description 
with the observation that, “ As to the state of the soul every 
sense becomes clear and pure, the intellect acute and the gnos- 
tic powers so prophetic that the patients can prognosticate to 
themselves in the first place their own departure from life, then 
what will afterward take place to those present.” After this 
the exquisite picture of the death of Pericles is conjured up from 
Plutarch, with true artistic skill, to sustain the argument. A 
plague, perchance a typhus raging and decimating the city of 
Athens, claims amongst its victims the famous soldier and states- 
man. The sufferer has in the earlier stages of his malady lucid 
intervals, and in one of these intervals he wakes up to find 
round his neck an amulet or charm the women had hung about 
him ; he shows this to one of his friends, to convey that he is 
very sick indeed to admit of such foolery. Then the disease 
progressing, the delirium becomes more persistent, and is suc- 
ceeded by a fit of lethargy, with other indications that death is 
near. And now, the end close at hand, the friends sitting 
around, treating him as one absent, speak of the greatness of 
his merit, reckon up and recount his actions, and the number of 
his victories ; the nine trophies which, as their chief commander 
and conqueror of their enemies, he has set up for the honour of 
their city. But, while they thus speak, he has listened and 
understood, and waking up speaks to them ; tells them he won- 
dered they should commend and take notice of things which 
were as much owing to fortune as to anything else, and had 
happened to many commanders, while at the same time they 
should not make mention of that which was the most excellent 
and greatest thing of all, that no Athenian, through his means, 
ever wore mourning. And soon after this he dies. Keturning 
from his historical survey, our author. La Koche, comes once 
more to his own experiences of the phenomena of lucid interval 
in articulo mortis, after long terms of unconscious existence, 
and shows by the most convincing demonstration that even in 
inflammation of the coverings of the brain, associated with 
change in the brain substance itself, there may be lucidity of 
thought antecedently to and up to the moment of death. 
The nature of the modifications which take place in the 
diseased organ, and which may account for a resumption of the 
mental functions after an interruption of some days, is discussed, 
speculated on well, and still left unsolved. I must not be 
