THE SUSPENSION OF LIFE.
Every one knows that life exists in a latent state in the seeds of plants, and may be preserved therein, so to speak, indefinitely. In 1853, Ridolfi deposited in the Egyptian Museum of Florence a sheaf of wheat that he had obtained from seeds found in a mummy case dating back about 3,000 years. This aptitude of revivification is found to a high degree in animalcules of low order. The air which we breathe is loaded with impalpable dust that awaits, for ages perhaps, proper conditions of heat and moisture to give it an ephemeral life that it will lose and acquire by turns.
In 1707, Spallanzani found it possible, eleven times in succession, to suspend the life of rotifers submitted to desiccation, and to call it back again by moistening this organic dust with water. A few years ago Doyere brought to life some tardigrades that had been dried at a temperature of 150° and kept four weeks in a vacuum. If we ascend the scale of beings, we find analogous phenomena produced by diverse causes. Flies that have been imported in casks of Madeira have been resuscitated in Europe, and chrysalids have been kept in this state for years. Cockchafers drowned, and then dried in the sun, have been revived after a lapse of twenty-four hours, two days, and even five days, after submersion. Frogs, salamanders, and spiders poisoned by curare or nicotine, have returned to life after several days of apparent death.
Cold produces some extraordinary effects. Spallanzani kept several frogs in the center of a lump of ice for two years, and, although they became dry, rigid, almost friable, and gave no external appearance of being alive, it was only necessary to expose them to a gradual and moderate heat to put an end to the lethargic state in which they lay.
Pikes and salamanders have at different epochs been revived before the eyes of Maupertuis and Constant Dumeril (members of the Academy of Sciences) after being frozen stiff. Auguste Dumeril, son of Constant, and who was the reporter of the committee relative to the Blois toad in 1851, published a curious memoir the following year in which he narrates how he interrupted life through congelation of the liquids and solids of the organism. Some frogs, whose internal temperature had been reduced to -2° in an atmosphere of -12°, returned to life before his eyes, and he observed their tissues regain their usual elasticity and their heart pass from absolute immobility to its normal motion.
There is therefore no reason for doubting the assertions of travelers who tell us that the inhabitants of North America and Russia transport fish that are frozen stiff, and bring them to life again by dipping them into water of ordinary temperature ten or fifteen days afterward. But I think too much reliance should not be put in the process devised by the great English physiologist, Hunter, for prolonging the life of man indefinitely by successive freezings. It has been allowed to no one but a romancer, Mr. Edmond About, to be present at this curious operation.
Among the mammifera we find appearances of death in their winter sleep; but these are incomplete, since the temperature of hibernating animals remains greater by one degree than that of the surrounding air, and the motions of the heart and respiration are simply retarded. Dr. Preyer has observed that a hamster sometimes goes five minutes without breathing appreciably after a fortnight's sleep.
In man himself a suspension of life, or at least phenomena that seem inseparable therefrom, has been observed many times. In the Journal des Savants for 1741 we read that a Col. Russel, having witnessed the death of his wife, whom he tenderly loved, did not wish her buried, and threatened to kill any one who should attempt to remove the body before he witnessed its decomposition himself. Eight days passed by without the woman giving the slightest sign of life, "when, at a moment when he was holding her hand and shedding tears over her, the church bell began to ring, and, to his indescribable surprise, his wife sat up and said, 'It is the last stroke, we shall be too late.' She recovered."
At a session of the Academy of Sciences, Oct. 17, 1864, Mr. Blaudet communicated a report upon a young woman of thirty summers who, being subject to nervous attacks, fell, after her crises, into a sort of lethargic sleep which lasted several weeks and sometimes several months. One of her sleeps, especially, lasted from the beginning of the year 1862 until March, 1863.
Dr. Paul Levasseur relates that, in a certain English family, lethargy seemed to have become hereditary. The first case was exhibited in an old lady who remained for fifteen days in an immovable and insensible state, and who afterward, on regaining her consciousness, lived for quite a long time. Warned by this fact, the family preserved a young man for several weeks who appeared to be dead, but who came to life again.
Dr. Pfendler, in an inaugural thesis (Paris, 1833), minutely describes a case of apparent death of which he himself was a witness. A young girl of Vienna at the age of 15 was attacked by a nervous affection that brought on violent crises followed by lethargic states which lasted three or four days. After a time she became so exhausted that the first physicians of the city declared that there was no more hope. It was not long, in fact, before she was observed to rise in her bed and fall back as if struck with death. "For four hours she appeared to me," says Dr. Pfendler, "completely inanimate. With Messrs. Franck and Schaeffer, I made every possible effort to rekindle the spark of life. Neither mirror, nor burned feather, nor ammonia, nor pricking succeeded in giving us a sign of sensibility. Galvanism was tried without the patient showing any contractility. Mr. Franck believed her to be dead, but nevertheless advised me to leave her on the bed. For twenty-eight hours no change supervened, although it was thought that a little putrefaction was observed. The death bell was sounded, the friends of the girl had dressed her in white and had crowned her with flowers, and all was arranged for her burial. Desiring to convince myself of the course of the putrefaction, I visited the body again, and found that no further advance had been made than before. What was my astonishment when I believed that I saw a slight respiratory motion. I looked again, and saw that I was not mistaken. I at once used friction and irritants, and in an hour and a half the respiration increased. The patient opened her eyes, and, struck with the funereal paraphernalia around her, returned to consciousness, and said, 'I am too young to die.'" All this was followed by a ten hours' sleep. Convalescence proceeded rapidly, and the girl became free from all her nervous troubles. During her crisis she heard everything. She quoted some Latin words that Mr. Franck had used. Her most fearful agony had been to hear the preparations for her burial without being able to get rid of her torpor. Medical dictionaries are full of anecdotes of this nature, but I shall cite but two more.
On the 10th of November, 1812, during the fatal retreat from Russia, Commandant Tascher, desiring to bring back to France the body of his general, who had been killed by a bullet, and who had been buried since the day before, disinterred him, and, upon putting him into a landau, and noticing that he was still breathing, brought him to life again by dint of care. A long time afterward this same general was one of the pall bearers at the funeral obsequies of the aide-de-camp who had buried him. In 1826 a young priest returned to life at the moment the bishop of the diocese was pronouncing the De Profundis over his body. Forty years afterward, this priest, who had become Cardinal Donnett, preached a feeling sermon upon the danger of premature burial.
I trust I have now sufficiently prepared the mind of the reader for an examination of the phenomena of the voluntary suspension of life that I shall now treat of.
The body of an animal may be compared to a machine that converts the food that it receives into motion. It receives nothing, it will produce nothing; but there is no reason why it should get out of order if it is not deteriorated by external agents. The legendary rustic who wanted to accustom his ass to go without food was therefore theoretically wrong only because he at the same time wanted the animal to work. The whole difficulty consists in breaking with old habits. To return to the comparison that we just made, we shall run the risk of exploding the boiler of a steam engine if we heat it or cool it abruptly, but we can run it very slowly and for a very long time with but very little fuel. We may even preserve a little fire under the ashes, and this, although it may not be capable of setting the parts running, will suffice later on to revivify the fireplace after it has been charged anew with fuel.
We have recently had the example of Dr. Tanner, who went forty days without any other nourishment than water. Not very long ago Liedovine de Schiedam, who had been bedridden for twenty years, affirmed that she had taken no food for eight of them. It is said that Saint Catharine of Sienna gradually accustomed herself to do without food, and that she lived twenty years in total abstinence. We know of several examples of prolonged sleep during which the sleeper naturally took no nourishment. In his Magic Disquisitions, Delvis cites the case of a countryman who slept for an entire autumn and winter. Pfendler relates that a certain young and hysterical woman fell twice into a deep slumber which each time lasted six months. In 1883 an enceinte woman was found asleep on a bench in the Grand Armee Avenue. She was taken to the Beaujon Hospital, where she was delivered a few days after while still asleep, and it was not till the end of three months that she could be awakened from her lethargy. At this very moment, at Tremeille, a woman named Marguerite Bouyenvalle is sleeping a sleep that has lasted nearly a year, during which the only food that she has had is a few drops of soup daily.
What is more remarkable, Dr. Fournier says in his Dictionary of Medical Sciences that he knew of a distinguished writer at Paris, who sometimes went for months at a time without taking anything but emollient drinks, while at the same time living along like other people.
Respiration is certainly more necessary to life than food is; but it is not absolutely indispensable, as we have seen in the cases of apparent death cited in our previous article. It is possible, through exercise, for a person to accustom himself, up to a certain point, to abstinence from air as he can from food. Those who dive for pearls, corals, or sponges succeed in remaining from two to three minutes under water. Miss Lurline, who exhibited in Paris in 1882, remained two and a half minutes beneath the water of her aquarium without breathing. In his treatise De la Nature, Henri de Rochas, physician to Louis XIII., gives six minutes as the maximum length of time that can elapse between successive inspirations of air. It is probable that this figure was based upon an observation of hibernating animals.
In his Encyclopedic Dictionary, Dr. Dechambre relates the history of a Hindoo who hid himself in the waters of the Ganges where women were bathing, seized one of them by the legs, drowned her, and then removed her jewels. Her disappearance was attributed to crocodiles. One woman who succeeded in escaping him denounced the assassin, who was seized and hanged in 1817.
A well known case, is that of Col. Townshend, who possessed the remarkable faculty of stopping at will not only his respiration, but also the beating of his heart. He performed the experiment one day in the presence of Surgeon Gosch, who cared for him in his old age, two physicians, and his apothecary, Mr. Shrine. In their presence, says Gosch, the Colonel lay upon his back, Dr. Cheyne watched his pulse, Dr. Baynard put his hand upon his heart, and Mr. Shrine held a mirror to his mouth. After a few seconds no pulse, movement of the heart, or respiration could be observed. At the end of half an hour, as the spectators were beginning to get frightened, they observed the functions progressively resuming their course, and the Colonel came back to life.
The fakirs of India habituate themselves to abstinence from air, either by introducing into the nostrils strings that come out through the mouth, or by dwelling in subterranean cells that air and light never enter except through narrow crevices that are sometimes filled with clay. Here they remain seated in profound silence, for hours at a time, without any other motion than that of the fingers as the latter slowly take beads from a chaplet, the mind absorbed by the mental pronunciation of OM (the holy triune name), which they must repeat incessantly while endeavoring to breathe as little as possible. They gradually lengthen the intervals between their inspirations and expirations, until, in three or four months, they succeed in making them an hour and a half. This is not the ideal, for one of their sacred books says, in speaking of a saint: "At the fourth month he no longer takes any food but air, and that only every twelve days, and, master of his respiration he embraces God in his thought. At the fifth he stands as still as a pole; he no longer sees anything but Baghavat, and God touches his cheek to bring him out of his ecstasy."
It will be conceived that by submitting themselves to such gymnastics from infancy, certain men, already predisposed by atavism or a peculiar conformation, might succeed in doing things that would seem impossible to the common run of mortals. Do we not daily see acrobats remaining head downward for a length of time that would suffice to kill 99 per cent, of their spectators through congestion if they were to place themselves in the same posture? Can the savage who laboriously learns to spell, letter by letter, comprehend how many people get the general sense of an entire page at a single glance?
There is no reason, then, a priori, for assigning to the domain of legerdemain the astonishing facts that are told us by a large number of witnesses, worthy of credence, regarding a young fakir who, forty years ago, was accustomed to allow himself to be buried, and resuscitated several months afterward.
An English officer, Mr. Osborne, gives the following account of one of these operations, which took place in 1838 at the camp of King Randjet Singh:
"After a few preparations, which lasted some days, and that it would prove repugnant to enumerate, the fakir declared himself ready to undergo the ordeal. The Maharajah, the Sikhs chiefs, and Gen. Ventura, assembled near a masonry tomb that had been constructed expressly to receive him. Before their eyes, the fakir closed with wax all the apertures in his body (except his mouth) that could give entrance to air. Then, having taken off the clothing that he had on, he was enveloped in a canvas sack, and, according to his wish, his tongue was turned back in such a way as to close the entrance to his windpipe. Immediately after this he fell into a sort of trance. The bag that held him was closed and a seal was put upon it by the Maharajah. The bag was then put into a wooden box, which was fastened by a padlock, sealed, and let down into the tomb. A large quantity of earth was thrown into the hole and rammed down, and then barley was sown on the surface and sentinels placed around with orders to watch day and night.
"Despite all such precautions, the Maharajah had his doubts; so he came twice in the space of ten months (the time during which the fakir was buried), and had the tomb opened in his presence. The fakir was in the bag into which he had been put, cold and inanimate. The ten months having expired, he was disinterred, Gen. Ventura and Capt. Ward saw the padlock removed, the seals broken, and the box taken from the tomb. The fakir was taken out, and no pulsation either at the heart or pulse indicated the presence of life. As a first measure for reviving him, a person introduced a finger gently into his mouth and placed his tongue in its natural position. The top of his head was the only place where there was any perceptible heat. By slowly pouring warm water over his body, signs of life were gradually obtained, and after about two hours of care the patient got up and began to walk.
"This truly extraordinary man says that during his burial he has delightful dreams, but that the moment of awakening is always very painful to him. Before returning to a consciousness of his existence he experiences vertigoes. His nails and hair cease to grow. His only fear is that he may be harmed by worms and insects, and it is to protect himself from these that he has the box suspended in the center of the tomb."
This sketch was published in the Magasin Pittoresque in 1842 by a writer who had just seen Gen. Ventura in Paris, and had obtained from him a complete confirmation of the story told by Capt. Wade.
Another English officer, Mr. Boileau, in a work published in 1840, and Dr. MacGregor, in his medical topography of Lodhiana, narrate two analogous exhumations that they separately witnessed. The question therefore merits serious examination.--A. de Rochas, in La Nature.
Some experiments recently made by M. Olszewsky appear to show that liquid oxygen is one of the best of refrigerants. He found that when liquefied oxygen was allowed to vaporize under the pressure of one atmosphere, a temperature as low as -181.4° C. was produced. The temperature fell still further when the pressure on the liquid oxygen was reduced to nine millimeters of mercury. Though the pressure was reduced still further to four millimeters of mercury, yet the oxygen remained liquid. Liquefied nitrogen, when allowed to evaporate under a pressure of sixty millimeters of mercury, gave a temperature of -214° C., only the surface of the liquid gas became opaque from incipient solidification. Under lower pressures the nitrogen solidified, and temperatures as low as -225° C. were recorded by the hydrogen thermometer. The lowest temperature obtained by allowing liquefied carbonic oxide to vaporize was -220.5° C.