Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/292

280 which may thus imitate death more or less closely; the commonest one is that of fainting. In this case neither sensation nor movements of circulation or respiration are any longer perceptible; the warmth is lowered, the skin pallid and colorless. Instances of hysteria are cited in which the attack has been prolonged for several days, attended with fainting. In this strange condition all physiological manifestations remain suspended; yet they are not, as it was long supposed, suspended absolutely. M. Bouchest has proved that, in the gravest cases of fainting, the pulsations of the heart continue, weaker and rarer, and harder to be heard than in normal life, but clearly distinguishable when the ear is laid on the precordial region. On the other hand, the muscles retain their suppleness and the limbs their pliability.

Asphyxia, which properly is suspension of breathing, and consequently of the blood's revivification, sometimes passes into a serious fainting condition followed by seeming death, from which the sufferer recovers after a period of varying length. This state may be induced either by drowning or by inhaling a gas unfit for respiration, such as carbonic acid in deep wells, emanations from latrines, or the chokedamp of mines, or by suffocation. In 1650 a woman named Ann Green was hanged at Oxford. She had been hanging for half an hour, and several people, to shorten her suffering, had pulled her by the feet with all their strength. After she was placed in her coffin it was observed that she still breathed. The executioner's assistants attempted to end her existence, but, thanks to the help of physicians, she came back to life, and continued to live some time afterward. Drowning occasions an equally deep insensibility, during which, very singularly, the psychical faculties retain some degree of activity. Sailors, after timely resuscitation from drowning, declare that, while under water, they had returned in thought to their families, and sadly fancied the grief about to be caused by their death. After a few minutes of physical rest, they suffered violent colic of the heart, which seemed to twist itself about in their chests; afterward this anguish was followed by utter annihilation of consciousness. It is very difficult, moreover, to determine how long apparent death may be protracted in an organism under water. It varies greatly with temperaments.

In the islands of the Greek archipelago, where the business of gathering sponges from the bottom of the sea is pursued, children are not allowed to drink wine until, by practice, they have grown accustomed to remain a certain time under water. Old divers of the archipelago say that the time to return and take breath at the surface is indicated to them by painful convulsions of the limbs, and very severe contractions in the region of the heart. This power of enduring asphyxia for some time, and resisting by force of will the movements of respiration, has been remarked under other circumstances. The case of a Hindoo is mentioned, who used to creep into the palisaded enclosures used for