entered the vault where the body had been placed, and removing the coffin lid attempted to remove the ring. This he was unable to do owing to a swollen condition of the finger. Procuring a small saw he proceeded to cut the finger off; when, to his horror, as the saw began to cut, the lady uttered an exclamation of pain and sat up. She lived for many years after and became the mother of two children.

The tragic interest of such an event and its easy adaptability to their purpose has made its occurrence a frequent incident in the plot of the poet, the novelist, and the dramatist. What calamity could equal in horror that which would overtake one, who, conscious of what was going on around him, unable to make known the fact that he lived and realised that the loving care and ministering hands of relatives and friends were destroying all hope of escape, were obstructing all means of resuscitation, and irrevocably sealing his doom? Or who can consider unmoved the torture, mental and physical, which would seize upon one who should wake from unconsciousness within the narrow bounds of a coffin, or the walls of a tomb? Touching the first of these two conditions, Gandolfi, an eminent writer on forensic medicine, says that without doubt, in some rare instances "persons supposed to be dead, may be the witnesses, the mute and fear-stricken witnesses, of their own funeral; they may know perfectly well that they are going to be put into coffins, and thence into the earth, and yet be powerless, alive as they are, to avert the awful catastrophe." The following well-authenticated case is related: A German, schullehrer, (schoolmaster) had been pronounced dead by a physician. The funeral was fixed for a certain day, but as a sister who lived at a distance had not arrived, it was postponed. The "deceased," in his windingsheet, and unable to move and apparently unable to breathe, heard with joy of this delay, and vainly tried to open his eyes or in some way apprise them of the fact that he still lived. At length the sister arrived, and being ushered into the room where he lay, burst into a paroxysm of tears and seizing his hand reproached him passionately for having died without one word of farewell. She took his head between her hands and

wildly called upon him to speak once more. The eyelids were seen to quiver; the eyes opened, and he was rescued. This is simply the story as related by the man himself. Gandolfi asserts that many such cases have been recorded in Europe, at one time and another, and most of them have been proved and authenticated.

Apparent death may result from natural causes, from disease, or from the action of drugs. Suspended animation, or technically, asphyxia without pulse, is the term applied to a state or condition wherein there is a complete suspension of objective signs in an organised living body, but there is not a total cessation of all vital action. In many cases, comparatively, the graphically-recalled thoughts of the victims prove that the functions of the cerebrum or thought-centres, were stimulated by fresh blood, and in no case is it believed that the circulation is completely stopped. Hibernation, or the condition of torpor in which certain animals and reptiles pass the winter-months, is probably the most conspicuous and common example of suspended animation, and one which has been most carefully studied in all its details. In a retired spot, a crevice among the rocks, a cave perhaps, the animal reposes. Respiration, at first apparent, becomes slower, and only manifest after ever-increasing intervals, and at length cannot be detected at all; the heart-beat is slowly and still more slowly performed, till it too disappears beyond the recognition of all, save the most practiced ear; the temperature sinks considerably below the normal, and the state of hibernation is complete. A perfect case of suspended animation, but not death. If the circulation should cease it would be a case of death, not apparent but actual; for it is well known that after only a comparatively brief period of non-circulation, animation cannot be recalled. Sufficient oxygen may pass through the skin to aerate the blood during hibernation; for while the capillary circulation continues, even though the heart no longer beats, ganglionic death has not occurred, and the possibility of resuscitation remains. Syncope is suspended. animation, often with little or no change in the circulation, while sleep is another and the most common example of it,

and after extreme exhaustion simulates
sometimes imperceptibly passes into it.
comparison:

"How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep!"

death, and indeed How common the

Continued sleep is the synonym of death. "He giveth his beloved sleep." Other examples of suspended animation are catalepsy, hypnotism, lethargy, and a certain condition of the drowning, together with profound narcotism, and anæsthesia. The difference between death and a state of trance-or Todt and Scheintodt as the Germans express it-has never been quite clearly understood by the general public, and the physician is sometimes asked to explain the cause of this apparent death, or to indicate or institute the tests whereby it may be distinguished from actual death; for the distinction between. the two may sometimes be masked, and the two conditions may so closely resemble each other as to demand the closest and most intelligent professional scrutiny.

The story of the Indian,* who survived a burial of more than a month, whether it be true or not, is historical, and many are the cases which might be cited to prove that suspended animation may so counterfeit death as to pass undetected. Some years ago, during an epidemic of variola in Toronto, Canada, a man died, as was supposed, of that disease. He was encoffined, and was being lowered into the grave, when he revived and called out. He was removed to the pest-house and made a good recovery. In these days, when land is dear, and burial-rights are held less sacred than the rights of builders and contractors, coffins have been opened by the pickaxe more than once, in the act of converting cemeteries into streets and building-sites. Here a grave has been opened whose inmate has turned in its shroud; there a corpse clutching its hair in a strained and unnatural position; dead men and women lying in their graves as they never lie in a Christian land at the time of burial. The presumption is that these were premature burials.

* BRAID: On Trance. An account given by Sir Claude Wade of a Fakir, buried alive during a catalepsy artificially produced, and resuscitated six weeks afterward, in presence of the writer, the Rajah Runjeet Singh and others, at Lahore, in 1837.

In 1879 a young girl died, as was believed, in Piedmont, on the eve of her wedding day. Heart-disease, on which is laid the responsibility of many sudden deaths, no doubt often from other causes, was assigned as the cause, and it was supposed that her place in society would "know her no more forever." As the earth fell with a dull thud on the coffin in the grave, strange noises were heard proceeding from it, and the susperstitious grave-diggers fled, while the mourners fell on their knees and began to pray. But the stout-hearted bridegroom insisted that the coffin should be opened. It was done, but too late; the girl was found in an attitude of horror and pain impossible to describe; her eyes wide open; her teeth clinched; her hand clutching her hair, but life was extinct.

Cardinal Espinosa, being dismissed from office as Minister to Philip II., of Spain, fell to the ground as if dead. It was decided that the unfortunate man should be embalmed, and in the midst of this process he awoke and struggled with the operator, but too late; the wounds which he had received were mortal.

In the St. Apostolen Kirke (Apostle's Church), in Cologne, I saw a picture which commemorates the rescue from the tomb, of a wife of a celebrated knight. She had been attacked by the plague which was then raging, and having fallen into a deathlike swoon or trance, was interred in the church. She was awakened from her trance by a thievish grave-digger, in his attempts to abstract her ring, and returned to the house of her husband, where she lived for many years in perfect health.

There are other cases more horrible still, which are, if it be possible, twofold burials, in which one person is supposed to be buried, but really two lives are sacrificed. An Italian lady "died" during the eighth month of pregnancy, her husband being absent at the time. On his return the day following the funeral, he caused the tomb to be opened, that he might gaze once more on the face of his wife. She was indeed dead, but death had taken place in the grave. A child struggling into existence met the gaze of the afflicted man. It was rescued, and lived to attain manhood and political and military distinction.

From the same country comes the horrible narrative of a poor woman who died just before confinement. Being of the poorest of the poor she was buried uncoffined. A week later the grave was opened to admit another, when the woman was found to have "moved in the grave." Her eyes were staring frightfully; she had tried to bite the bands with which her wrists were bound together. But the bands of her legs were rent asunder, and there in the dust lay a dead child.

It is needless to prolong further the list of examples. The existence of a state of suspended animation or trance, so closely resembling death as to sometimes pass for it, seems to be proved, and must be acknowledged.

Few question the possibility of such a state. The question is, how is it to be distinguished from death, actual and absolute? A more vital or important question could hardly arise. It concerns communities and individuals; it is of vital interest to you and to me. If there is a chance of premature burial, be it ever so remote, we want to know it, and still more, the means by which it may be obviated. It is of interest to every one, both as it concerns his own body, and in a twofold degree, as it relates to those near and dear to him. Believing in the occurrence, not to take exhaustive precautions to guard himself from such a dire calamity would be, in the individual, an act of negligence; not to preserve his wife and children, aye, and the community at large, from the danger of such a double death, would be, in the citizen, a criminal omission. Death may be defined as the distinctive cessation of all those functions the aggregate of which constitute life; it is commonly preceded by painful symptoms styled the "agony"; may be "natural," the result of disease or old age; or "violent, the result of injuries; may be "molecular," limited to a part; or "somatic," affecting the whole body, and may begin at the heart, or the lung, or the brain, or in the spinal cord, or perhaps in the blood, though the latter is questionable. The ancients believed that death must commence in the heart, lungs, or brain, and therefore called these organs Atria Mortis -the Halls of Death. Paralysis of the sphincters, the variation of the temperature, the complete absence of the respira