SUSPENDED ANIMATION.
Some time since an article appeared in the Times, quoted from the Brisbane Courier (an Australian paper of good credit), stating that one Signor Rotura had devised a plan by which animals might be congealed for weeks or months without being actually deprived of life, so that they might be shipped from Australia for English ports as dead meat, yet on their arrival here be restored to full life and activity. Many regarded this account as intended to be received seriously, though a few days later an article appeared, the opening words of which implied that only persons from north of the Tweed should have taken the article au grand sérieux. Of course it was a hoax; but it is worthy of notice that the editor of the Brisbane Courier had really been misled, as he admitted a few weeks later, with a candour which did him credit.[70]
This wonderful discovery, however, besides being worth publishing as a joke (though rather a mischievous one, as will presently be shown), did good service also by eliciting from a distinguished physician certain statements respecting the possibility of suspending animation, which otherwise might have remained for some time unpublished. I propose here to consider these statements, and the strange possibilities which some of them seem to suggest. In the first place, however, it may be worth while to recall the chief statements in the clever Australian story, as some of Dr. Richardson's statements refer specially to that narrative. I shall take the opportunity of indicating certain curious features of resemblance between the Australian story, which really had its origin in America (I am assured that it was published a year earlier in a New York paper), and an American hoax which acquired a wide celebrity some forty years ago, the so-called Lunar Hoax. As it is certain that the two stories came from different persons, the resemblance referred to seems to suggest that the special mental qualities (defects, bien entendu) which cause some to take delight in such inventions, are commonly associated with a characteristic style of writing. If Buffon was right, indeed, in saying, Le style c'est de l'homme même, we can readily understand that clever hoaxers should thus have a style peculiar to themselves.
It can hardly be considered essential to the right comprehension of scientific experiments that a picturesque account should be given of the place where the experiments were made. The history of the wonderful Australian discovery opens nevertheless as follows:—"Many of the readers of the Brisbane Courier who know Sydney Harbour will remember the long inlet opposite the heads known as Middle Harbour, which, in a succession of land-locked reaches, stretches away like a chain of lakes for over twenty miles. On one of these reaches, made more than ordinarily picturesque by the bold headlands that drop almost sheer into the water, stand, on about an acre of grassy flat, fringed by white beach on which the clear waters of the harbour lap, two low brick buildings. Here, in perfect seclusion, and with a careful avoidance of publicity, is being conducted an experiment, the success of which, now established beyond any doubt, must have a wider effect upon the future prosperity of Australia than any project ever contemplated." It was precisely in this tone that the author of the "Lunar Hoax"[71] opened his account of those "recent discoveries in astronomy which will build an imperishable monument to the age in which we live, and confer upon the present generation of the human race a proud distinction through all future time." "It has been poetically said," he remarks—though probably he would have found some difficulty in saying where or by whom this had been said,—"that the stars of heaven are the hereditary regalia of man, as the intellectual sovereign of the animal creation; he may now fold the zodiac around him with a loftier consciousness of his mental supremacy" (a sublime idea, irresistibly suggestive of the description which an American humourist gave of a certain actor's representation of the death of Richard III., "he wrapped the star-spangled banner round him, and died like the son of a hoss").
It next becomes necessary to describe the persons engaged in pursuing the experiments by which the art of freezing animals alive is to be attained. "The gentlemen engaged in this enterprise are Signor Rotura, whose researches into the botany and natural history of South America have rendered his name eminent; and Mr. James Grant, a pupil of the late Mr. Nicolle, so long associated with Mr. Thomas Mort in his freezing process. Next to the late Mr. Nicolle, Mr. James Grant can claim pre-eminence of knowledge in the science of generating cold, and his freezing chamber at Woolhara has long been known as the seat of valuable experiments originated in his, Mr. Nicolle's, lifetime." Is it merely an accident, by the way, or is it due to the circumstance that exceptional powers of invention in general matters are often found in company with singular poverty of invention as to details, that two of the names here mentioned closely resemble names connected with the Lunar Hoax? It was Nicollet who in reality devised the Lunar Hoax, though Richard Alton Locke, the reputed author, probably gave to the story its final form; and, again, the story purported to come from Dr. Grant, of Glasgow. In the earlier narrative, again, as in the later, due care was taken to impress readers with the belief that those who had made the discovery, or taken part in the work, were worthy of all confidence. Sir W. Herschel was the inventor of the optical device by which the inhabitants of the moon were to be rendered visible, a plan which "evinced the most profound research in optical science, and the most dexterous ingenuity in mechanical contrivance. But his son, Sir John Herschel, nursed and cradled in the observatory, and a practical astronomer from his boyhood, determined upon testing it at whatever cost." Among his companions he had "Dr. Andrew Grant, Lieutenant Drummond of the Royal Engineers, and a large party of the best English mechanics."
The accounts of preliminary researches, doubts, and difficulties are in both cases very similar in tone. "It appears that five months ago," says the narrator of the Australian hoax, "Signor Rotura called upon Mr. Grant to invoke his assistance in a scheme for the transmission of live stock to Europe. Signor Rotura averred that he had discovered a South American vegetable poison, allied to the well-known woolara (sic) that had the power of perfectly suspending animation, and that the trance thus produced continued until the application of another vegetable essence caused the blood to resume its circulation and the heart its functions. So perfect, moreover, was this suspension of life that Signor Rotura had found in a warm climate decomposition set in at the extremities after a week of this living death, and he imagined that if the body in this inert state were reduced to a temperature sufficiently low to arrest decomposition, the trance might be kept up for months, possibly for years. He frankly owned that he had never tried this preserving of the tissues by cold, and could not confidently speak as to its effect upon the after-restoration of the animal operated on. Before he left Mr. Grant he had turned that gentleman's doubts into wondering curiosity by experimenting on his dog." The account of this experiment I defer for a moment till I have shown how closely in several respects this portion of the Australian hoax resembles the corresponding part of the American story. It will be observed that the great discovery is presented as simply a very surprising development of a process which is strictly within the limits, not only of what is possible, but of what is known. So also in the case of the Lunar Hoax, the amazing magnifying power by which living creatures in the moon were said to have been rendered visible, was presented as simply a very remarkable development of the familiar properties of the telescope. In both cases, the circumstances which in reality limit the possible extension of the properties in question were kept conveniently concealed from view. In both cases, doubts and difficulties were urged with an apparent frankness intended to disarm suspicion. In both cases, also, the inventor of the new method by which difficulties were to be overcome is represented as in conference with a man of nearly equal skill, who urges the doubts naturally suggested by the wonderful nature of the promised achievements. In the Lunar Hoax, Sir John Herschel and Sir David Brewster are thus represented in conference. Herschel asks whether the difficulty arising from deficient illumination may not be overcome by effecting a transfusion of artificial light through the focal image. Brewster, startled at the novel thought, as he well might be, hesitatingly refers "to the refrangibility of rays and the angle of incidence," which is effective though glorious in its absurdity. (Yet it has been gravely asserted that this nonsense deceived Arago.) "Sir John, grown more confident, adduced the example of the Newtonian reflector, in which the refrangibility was arrested by the second speculum and the angle of incidence restored by the third" (a bewilderingly ridiculous statement). "'And,' continued he, 'why cannot the illuminated microscope, say the hydro-oxygen, be applied to render distinct, and if necessary even to magnify, the focal object?' Sir David sprang from his chair in an ecstasy of conviction, and leaping half-way to the ceiling" (from which we may infer that he was somewhat more than tête montée), "exclaimed, 'Thou art the man!'"
The method devised in each case being once accepted as sound, the rest of course readily follows. In the case of the Lunar Hoax a number of discoveries are made which need not here be described[72] (though I shall take occasion presently to quote some passages relating to them which closely resemble in style certain passages in the Australian narrative). In the later hoax, the illustrative experiments are forthwith introduced. Signor Rotura, having so far persuaded Mr. Grant of the validity of the plan as to induce him to allow a favourite dog to be experimented upon, "injected two drops of his liquid, mixed with a little glycerine, into a small puncture made in the dog's ear. In three or four minutes the animal was perfectly rigid, the four legs stretched backward, eyes wide open, pupils very much dilated, and exhibiting symptoms very similar to those caused by strychnine, except that there had been no previous struggle or pain. Begging his owner to have no apprehension for the life of his favourite animal, Signor Rotura lifted the dog carefully and placed him on a shelf in a cupboard, where he begged he might be left till the following day, when he promised to call at ten o'clock and revive the apparently dead brute. Mr. Grant continually during that day and night visited the cupboard, and so perfectly was life suspended in his favourite—no motion of the pulse or heart giving any indication of the possibility of revival—that he confesses he felt all the sharpest reproaches of remorse at having sacrificed a faithful friend to a doubtful and dangerous experiment. The temperature of the body, too, in the first four hours gradually lowered to 25 degrees Fahrenheit below ordinary blood temperature, which increased his fears as to the result; and by morning the body was as cold as in natural death. At ten o'clock next morning, according to promise, Signor Rotura presented himself, and laughing at Mr. Grant's fears, requested a tub of warm water to be brought. He tested this with the thermometer at 32 degrees Fahrenheit" (which, being the temperature of freezing water, can hardly be called warm), "and in this laid the dog, head under." In reply to Mr. Grant's objections Signor Rotura assured him that, as animation must remain entirely suspended until the administration of the antidote, no water could be drawn into the lungs, and that the immersion of the body was simply to bring it again to a blood-heat. After about ten minutes of this bath the body was taken out, and another liquid injected in a puncture made in the neck. "Mr. Grant tells me," proceeds the veracious narrator, "that the revival of Turk was the most startling thing he ever witnessed; and having since seen the experiment made upon a sheep, I can fully confirm his statement. The dog first showed the return of life in the eye" (winking, doubtless, at the joke), "and after five and a half minutes he drew a long breath, and the rigidity left his limbs. In a few minutes more he commenced gently wagging his tail, and then slowly got up, stretched himself, and trotted off as though nothing had happened." From this moment Mr. Grant had full faith in Signor Rotura's discovery, and promised him all the assistance in his power. They next determined to try freezing the body. But the first two experiments were not encouraging. Mr. Grant fortunately did not allow his favourite dog to be experimented upon further, so a strange dog was put into the freezing room at Mr. Grant's works for four days, after having in the first place had his animation suspended by Signor Rotura. Although this animal survived so far as to draw a long breath, the vital energies appeared too exhausted for a complete rally, and the animal died. So also did the next two animals experimented on, a cat and a dog. "In the meantime, however, Dr. Barker had been taken into their counsels, and at his suggestion respiration was encouraged, as in the case of persons drowned, by artificial compression and expansion of the lungs. Dr. Barker was of opinion that, as the heart in every case began to beat, it was a want of vital force to set the lungs in proper motion that caused death. The result showed his surmises to be entirely correct. A number of animals whose lives had been sealed up in this artificial death have been kept in the freezing chamber from one to five weeks, and it is found that though the shock to the system from this freezing is very great, it is not increased by duration of time."
I need not follow the hoaxer's account of the buildings erected for the further prosecution of these researches. One point, however, may be mentioned illustrating the resemblance to which I have already referred as existing between this Australian narrative and the Lunar Hoax. In describing the works erected at Middle Harbour, the Australian account carefully notes that the necessary funds were provided by Mr. Christopher Newton, of Pitt Street. In like manner, in the Lunar Hoax we are told that the plate-glass required for the optical arrangement devised by Sir J. Herschel was "obtained, by consent be it observed, from the shop-window of M. Desanges, the jeweller to his ex-majesty Charles X., in High Street."
Now comes the culminating experiment, the circumstances of which are the more worthy of being carefully noted, because it is distinctly stated by Dr. Richardson that none of the experiments described in this narrative, apocryphal though they may really be, can be regarded as beyond the range of scientific possibilities:—"Arrived at the works in Middle Harbour, I was taken into the building that contains Mr. Grant's apparatus for generating cold.... Attached to this is the freezing chamber, a small, dark room, about eight feet by ten. Here were fourteen sheep, four lambs, and three pigs, stacked on their sides in a heap, alive, which Mr. Grant told me had been in their present position for nineteen days, and were to remain there for another three months. Selecting one of the lambs, Signor Rotura put it on his shoulder, and carried it outside into the other building, where a number of shallow cemented tanks were in the floor, having hot and cold water taps to each tank, with a thermometer hanging alongside. One of these tanks was quickly filled, and its temperature tested by the Signor, I meantime examining with the greatest curiosity and wonder the nineteen-days-dead lamb. The days of miracles truly seem to have come back to us, and many of those stories discarded as absurdities seem to me less improbable than this fact, witnessed by myself. There was the lamb, to all appearance dead, and as hard almost as a stone, the only difference perceptible to me between his condition and actual death being the absence of dull glassiness about the eye, which still retained its brilliant transparency. Indeed, this brilliancy of the eye, which is heightened by the enlargement of the pupil, is very striking, and lends a rather weird appearance to the bodies. The lamb was gently dropped into the warm bath, and was allowed to remain in it about twenty-three minutes, its head being raised above the water twice for the introduction of the thermometer into its mouth, and then it was taken out and placed on its side on the floor, Signor Rotura quickly dividing the wool on its neck, and inserting the sharp point of a small silver syringe under the skin and injecting the antidote. This was a pale green liquid, and, as I believe, a decoction from the root of the Astracharlis, found in South America. The lamb was then turned on its back, Signor Rotura standing across it, gently compressing its ribs with his knees and hands in such a manner as to imitate their natural depression and expansion during breathing. In ten minutes the animal was struggling to free itself, and when released skipped out through the door and went gambolling and bleating over the little garden in front. Nothing has ever impressed me so entirely with a sense of the marvellous. One is almost tempted to ask, in the presence of such a discovery, whether death itself may not ultimately be baffled by scientific investigation." In the Lunar Hoax there is a passage resembling in tone the lively account of the lamb's behaviour when released. Herds of agile creatures like antelopes were seen in the moon, "abounding in the acclivitous glades of the woods." "This beautiful creature afforded us," says the narrator, "the most exquisite amusement. The mimicry of its movements upon our white-painted canvas was as faithful and luminous as that of animals within a few yards of the camera obscura. Frequently, when attempting to put our fingers upon its beard, it would suddenly bound away, as if conscious of our earthly impertinence; but then others would appear, whom we could not prevent nibbling the herbage, say or do to them what we would." And again, a little further on, "We fairly laughed at the recognition of so familiar an acquaintance as a sheep in so distant a land—a good large sheep, which would not have disgraced the farms of Leicestershire or the shambles of Leadenhall Market; presently they appeared in great numbers, and on reducing the lenses we found them in flocks over a great part of the valley. I need not say how desirous we were of finding shepherds to these flocks, and even a man with blue apron and rolled-up sleeves would have been a welcome sight to us, if not to the sheep; but they fed in peace, lords of their own pastures, without either protector or destroyer in human shape."
Not less amusing, though more gravely written, is the account of the benefits likely to follow from the use of the wonderful process for freezing animals alive. Cargoes of live sheep can be readily sent from Australia to Europe. Any that cannot be restored to life will still be good meat; while the rest can be turned to pasture or driven alive to market. With bullocks the case would not be quite so simple, because of their greater size and weight, which would render them more difficult to handle with safety. The carcass being rendered brittle by freezing, they are so much the more liable to injury. "It sounded odd to hear Mr. Grant and Signor Rotura laying stress upon the danger of breakage in a long voyage." This one can readily imagine.
Some of the remoter consequences of the discovery are touched on by the narrator, though but lightly, as if he saw the necessity of keeping his wonders within reasonable limits. Signor Rotura, "though he had never attempted his experiment on a human being," which was considerate on his part, "had no doubt at all as to its perfect safety." He had requested Sir Henry Parkes to allow him to operate on the next felon under capital sentence. This, by the way, was a compromising statement on our hoaxer's part. It requires very little acquaintance with our laws to know that no one could allow a felon condemned to death to be experimented on in this or in any other manner. Such a man is condemned to die, and to die without any preliminary tortures, bodily or mental, other than those inseparable from the legally adopted method of bringing death about. He can neither be allowed to remain alive after an experiment, and necessarily free (because he has not been condemned to other punishment than the death penalty), nor can he be first experimented upon and then hanged. So that that single sentence in the narrative should have shown every one that it was a hoax, even if the inherent absurdity of many other parts of the story had not shown this very clearly. As to whether a temporary suspension of the vital faculties would affect the longevity of the patient, Signor Rotura expressed himself somewhat doubtful; he believed, however, that the duration of life might in this way be prolonged for years. "I was anxious," says the hoaxer, "to know if a period of, say, five years of this inertness were submitted to, whether it would be so much cut out of one's life, or if it would be simply five years of unconscious existence tacked on to one's sentient life. Signor Rotura could give no positive answer, but he believes, as no change takes place or can take place while this frozen trance continues, no consumption, destruction, or reparation of tissue being possible, it would be so many unvalued and profitless years added to a lifetime." Of some of the strange ideas suggested by this conception I shall take occasion to speak further on; I must for the present turn, however, from the consideration of this ingenious hoax to discuss the scientific possibilities which underlie the narrative, or at least some parts of the narrative.
In the first place, it must be noticed that in the phenomena of hibernation we have what at a first view seems closely to resemble the results of Signor Rotura's apocryphal experiments. As was remarked in the Times, the idea underlying the Australian story is that the hibernation of animals can be artificially imitated and extended, so that as certain animals lie in a state of torpor and insensibility throughout the winter months, all animals also may perhaps be caused to lie in such a state for an indefinite length of time, if only a suitable degree of cold is maintained, and some special contrivance adopted to prevent insensibility from passing into death. The phenomena of hibernation are indeed so surprising, when rightly understood, that inexperienced persons might well believe in almost any wonders resulting from the artificial production (which, be it remembered, is altogether possible) of the hibernating condition, and the artificial extension of this condition to other animals than those which at present hibernate, and to long periods of time. It has been justly said, that if hibernation had only been noticed among cold-blooded animals, its possibility in the case of mammals would have seemed inconceivable. The first news that the bat and hedgehog pass into the state of complete hibernation, would probably have bean received as either a daring hoax or a very gross blunder.
Let us consider what hibernation really is. When, as winter approaches and their insect food disappears, the bat and the hedgehog resign themselves to torpor, the processes which we are in the habit of associating with vitality gradually diminish in activity. The breathing becomes slower and slower, the heart beats more and more slowly, more and more feebly. At last the breathing ceases altogether. The circulation does not wholly cease, however. So far as is known, the life of warm-blooded animals cannot continue after the circulation has entirely ceased for more than a certain not very considerable length of time.[73] The chemical changes on which animal heat depends, and without which there can be no active vitality, cease with the cessation of respiration. But dormant vitality is still maintained in hibernation, because the heart's fibre, excited to contract by the carbonized blood, continues to propel the blood through the torpid body. This slow circulation of venous blood continues during the whole period of hibernation. It is the only vital process which can be recognised; and it is not easy to understand how the life of any warm-blooded animal can be maintained in this way. The explanation usually offered is that the material conveyed by the absorbents suffices to counterbalance the process of waste occasioned by the slow circulation. But this does not in reality touch the chief difficulty presented by the phenomena of hibernation. So far as mere waste is concerned (as I have elsewhere pointed out) the imagined Australian process is as effectual as hibernation; in that process, of course the circulation would be as completely checked as the respiration; thus there would be no waste, and the absorbents (which would also be absolutely dormant) would not have to do even that slight amount of work which they accomplish during hibernation. Science can only say that the known cases of hibernation among warm-blooded animals show that the vital forces may be reduced much lower without destroying life, than but for them we should have deemed conceivable.
But next let us consider what science has to say as to the artificial suspension of vitality. In Dr. Richardson's paper on this subject there is much which seems almost as surprising as anything in the Australian story. Indeed, he seems scarcely to have felt assured that that story really was a hoax. "The statements," he says, "which, under the head of 'A Wonderful Discovery,' are copied from the Brisbane Courier, seem greatly to have astonished the reading public. To what extent the statements are true or untrue it is impossible to say. The whole may be a cleverly-written fiction, and certain of the words and names used seem, according to some readers, to suggest that view; but be this so or not, I wish to indicate that some part at all events of what is stated might be true, and is certainly within the range of possibility." "The discovery," he proceeds, "which is described in the communication under notice, is not in principle new; on the subject of suspension of animation I have myself been making experimental inquiries for twenty-five years at least, and have communicated to the scientific world many essays, lectures, and demonstrations, relating to it. I have twice read papers bearing on this inquiry to the Royal Society, once to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, two or three times in my lectures on Experimental and Practical Medicine, and published one in Nature. In respect to the particular point of the preservation of animal bodies for food, I dwelt on this topic in the lectures delivered before the Society of Arts, in April and May of last year (1878), explaining very definitely that the course of research in the direction of preservation must ultimately lead to a process by which we should keep the structures of animals in a form of suspended molecular life." In other words, Dr. Richardson had indicated the possibility of doing precisely that which would have constituted the chief value of the Australian discovery, if this had been real.
Let us next consider what is known respecting the possibility of suspending a conscious and active life. This is first stated in general terms by Dr. Richardson, as follows:—"If an animal perfectly free from disease be subjected to the action of some chemical agents or physical agencies which have the property of reducing to the extremest limit the motor forces of the body, the muscular irritability, and the nervous stimulus to muscular action, and if the suspension of the muscular irritability and of the nervous excitation be made at once and equally, the body even of a warm-blooded animal may be brought down to a condition so closely resembling death, that the most careful examination may fail to detect any signs of life." This general statement must be carefully studied if the reader desires thoroughly to understand at once the power and the limits of the power of science in this direction. The motor forces, the muscular irritability, and the nervous stimulus to muscular action, can be reduced to a certain extent without destroying life, but not absolutely without destroying life. The reduction of the muscular irritability must be made at once and equally; if the muscular irritability is reduced to its lowest limit while the nervous excitation remains unaltered, or is less reduced, death ensues; and vice versâ, if the nervous excitation is reduced to its lowest limits while the muscular irritability remains unaltered, or is little reduced, death equally follows. Then it is to be noticed that though when the state of seeming death is brought about, the most careful examination may fail to detect any signs of life, it does not follow that science may not find perfectly sure means of detecting cases where life still exists but is at its very lowest. Of course all the ordinary tests, in which so many place complete reliance—a mirror placed close to the mouth, a finger on the pulse, hand, or ear applied to the breast[74] over the heart, and so forth—would be utterly inadequate, in such a case, to reveal any signs of life. That doctors have been deceived by cases of suspended vitality not artificially produced, but presenting similar phenomena, is well known. A case in point may not be out of place here, as illustrating well certain features of suspended animation, and showing the possibility that in some cases consciousness may remain, even when the most careful examination detects no traces of life. The case is described by Dr. Alexander Crichton, in his "Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Mental Derangement." "A young lady, who had seemed gradually to sink until she died, had been placed in her coffin, careful scrutiny revealing no signs of vitality. On the day appointed for her funeral, several hymns were sung before her door. She was conscious of all that happened around her, and heard her friends lamenting her death. She felt them put on the dead-clothes, and lay her in the coffin, which produced an indescribable mental anxiety. She tried to cry, but her mind was without power, and could not act on the body. It was equally impossible to her to stretch out her arms or to open her eyes or to cry, although she continually endeavoured to do so. The internal anguish of her mind was, however, at its utmost height when the funeral hymns began to be sung and when the lid of the coffin was about to be nailed on. The thought that she was to be buried alive was the first one which gave activity to her mind, and caused it to operate on her corporeal frame. Just as the people were about to nail on the lid, a kind of perspiration was observed to appear on the surface of the body. It grew greater every moment, and at last a kind of convulsive motion was observed in the hands and feet of the corpse. A few minutes after, during which fresh signs of returning life appeared, she at once opened her eyes, and uttered a most pitiable shriek." In this case it was considered that the state of trance had been brought about by the excessive contractile action of the nervous centres. St. Augustine, by the way, remarks in his "De Civitate Dei" on the case of a certain priest called Restitutus (appropriately enough), who could when he wished withdraw himself from life in such sort that he did not feel when twitched or stung, but might even be burned without suffering pain except afterwards from the wound so produced. Not only did he not struggle or even move, but like a dead person he did not breathe, yet afterwards he said that he could hear the voices of those around him (if they spoke loudly) as if from a great distance (de longinquo).
To return, however, to Dr. Richardson's discussion of the artificial suspension of active life.
He recognises three degrees of muscular irritability, to which he has given the names of active efficient, passive efficient, and negative,—though doubtless he would recognize the probability that the line separating the first from the second may not always be easily traced, and that, though there is a most definite distinction between the second and the third, the actual position of the boundary line has not as yet been determined. In other words, so far as the first and second states are concerned, there are not two degrees only, but many. As regards the third or negative state, which is only another way of describing death, there is, of course, only one degree, though the evidence as to the existence of this state may be more or less complete and obvious. Dr. Richardson defines the active efficient state of muscular irritability as that "represented in the ordinary living muscle in which the heart is working at full tension, and all parts of the body are thoroughly supplied with blood, with perfection of consciousness in waking hours, and, in a word, full life." The second, or passive efficient state, "is represented in suspended animation, in which the heart is working regularly but at low tension, supplying the muscles and other parts with sufficient blood to maintain the molecular life, but no more." The third of these states—the negative—"is represented when there is no motion whatever of blood through the body, as in an animal entirely frozen."
With the first and third of these states I have in reality nothing to do, unless indeed it could be shown that the third or negative state can be produced without causing death. Perhaps in assuming, as I did above, that this state is identical with the state of the dead, I was, in fact, assuming what science has yet to demonstrate. I may at any rate, however, say without fear of valid contradiction, that science has as yet never succeeded in showing that this negative state may be attained even for a moment without death ensuing; and the probability (almost amounting to certainty) is that death and this change of state have in every instance been simultaneous. Dr. Richardson speaks of the second stage as that in which animation is usually suspended; but he does not show that the third stage can even possibly be attained without death.
The second stage, or stage of passive efficiency, closely resembles the third, "but differs from it in that, under favouring circumstances, the whole of the phenomena of the active efficient stage may be perfectly resumed, the heart suddenly enlarging in volume from its filling with blood, and reanimating the whole organism by the force of its renewed stroke in full tension. So far as we have yet proceeded," continues Dr. Richardson, "the whole phenomena of restoration from death are accomplished during this stage;" meaning, it would seem, that in all instances of restoration the restoration has been from the second, never from the third stage. "To those who are not accustomed to see them they are no doubt very wonderful, looking like veritable restorations from death. They surprise even medical men the first time they are witnessed by them." He gives an interesting illustration. At a meeting of the British Medical Association at Leeds, "a member of the Association was showing to a large audience the action of nitrous oxide gas, using a rabbit as the subject of his demonstration. The animal was removed from the narcotizing chamber a little too late, for it had ceased to breathe, and it was placed on the table to all appearance dead." "At this stage," he proceeds, "I went to the table, and by use of a small pair of double-acting bellows restored respiration. In about four minutes there was revival of active irritability in the abdominal muscles, and two minutes later the animal leaped again into life, as if it had merely been asleep. There was nothing remarkable in the fact; but it excited, even in so cultivated an audience as was then present, the liveliest surprise."
But when we learn the condition necessary that a body which has once been reduced to the state of passive efficiency should be restored to active life, we recognise that even when science has learned how to reduce vitality to a minimum without destroying it, few will care to risk the process, either in their own persons or in the case of those dear to them. Besides the condition already indicated, that the muscular irritability and the nervous excitation must be simultaneously and equally reduced, it is essential that the blood, the muscular fluid, and the nervous fluid should all three remain in what Dr. Richardson calls the aqueous condition, and not become what he calls pectous, a word which we must understand to bear the same relation to the word solid or crystalline that the word "aqueous," as used by Dr. Richardson, bears to the word watery. If all three fluids remain in the aqueous condition, "the period during which life may be restored is left undefined. It may be a very long period, including weeks, and possibly months, granting that decomposition of the tissues is not established; and even after a limited process of decomposition, there may be renewal of life in cold-blooded animals. But if pectous change begins in any one of the structures I have named, it extends like a crystallization quickly through all the structures, and thereupon recovery is impossible, for the change in one of the parts is sufficient to prevent the restoration of all. Thus the heart may be beating, but the blood being pectous it beats in vain; or the heart may beat and the blood may flow, but the voluntary muscles being pectous the circulating action is vain; or the heart may beat, the blood may flow, and the muscles may remain in the aqueous condition, but the nerves being pectous the circulating action is in vain; or sometimes the heart may come to rest, and the other parts may remain susceptible, but the motion of the heart and blood not being present to quicken them into activity, their life is in vain." Add to this, that the restoration of the motor forces, of the muscular irritability, and of the nervous excitation, must be as simultaneous and as equal as their reduction had been, and we begin to recognise decided objections to the too frequent suspension of animation, even when the most perfect artificial means have been devised for bringing about that interesting result.
Although, however, we may not feel encouraged to believe that many will care to have experiments tried on themselves in this direction, we may still examine with interest the results of experimental research and experience. These agree in showing that there are means by which active life may be suspended, while at the same time the aqueous condition of the fluids mentioned above (the blood, the muscular fluid, and the nervous fluid, the two latter of which are for convenience called the colloidal animal fluids, and are derived from the blood) is retained.
The first and in some respects the most efficient of these means is cold. The blood and the colloidal fluids remain in the aqueous condition when the body is exposed to cold at freezing-point. "At this same point all vital acts, excepting perhaps the motion of the heart" (it is Dr. Richardson, be it remembered, who thus uses the significant word "perhaps"), "may be temporarily arrested in an animal, and then some animals may continue apparently dead for long intervals of time, and may yet return to life under conditions favourable to recovery." Dr. Richardson gives a singular illustration of this, describing an experiment which must have appeared even more surprising to those who witnessed it than that in which the rabbit was restored to life. "In one of my lectures on death from cold," he says, "which I delivered in the winter session of 1867, some fish which during a hard frost had been frozen in a tank at Newcastle-on-Tyne, were sent up to me by rail. They were produced in the completely frozen state at the lecture, and by careful thawing many of them were restored to perfect life. At my Croomian lecture on muscular irritability after systemic death, a similar fact was illustrated from frogs." It would appear, indeed, that so far as cold-blooded animals are concerned, there is no recognisable limit to the time during which they may remain thus frozen yet afterwards recover. But, even in their case, much skill is required to make the recovery sure. "If in thawing them the utmost care is not taken to thaw gradually, and at a temperature always below the natural temperature of the living animal, the fluids will pass from the frozen state through the aqueous into the pectous so rapidly that death from pectous change will be pronounced without perceiving any intermediate or life stage at all." Naturally it is much more difficult to restore life in the case of warm-blooded animals. Indeed, Dr. Richardson remarks, that in the case of the more complex and differently shielded organs of warm-blooded animals, it is next to impossible to thaw equally and simultaneously all the colloidal fluids. "In very young animals it can be done. Young kittens, a day or two old, that have been drowned in ice-cold water, will recover after two hours' immersion almost to a certainty, if brought into dry air at a temperature of 98 degrees Fahrenheit. The gentlest motion of the body will be sufficient to re-start the respiration, and therewith the life."
Remarking on such cases as these, Dr. Richardson notes that the nearest natural approach to the stage of passive efficiency is seen in hibernating animals. He states, however, that in hibernation the complete state of passive efficiency is not produced. He does not accept the opinion of those who consider that in true hibernation breathing ceases as above described. A slow respiration continues, he believes, as well as that low stage of active efficiency of circulation which we have already indicated. "The hibernating animal sleeps only; and while sleeping it consumes or wastes; and if the cold be prolonged it may die from waking." More decisive, because surer, is the evidence derived from the possibility of waking the hibernating animals by the common methods used for waking a sleeper. This certainly seems to show that animation is not positively suspended.
He asks next the question whether an animal like a fish, frozen equally through all its structures, is to be regarded as actually dead in the strict sense of the word or not, seeing that if it be uniformly and equally thawed it may recover from this perfectly frozen state. "In like manner," he says, "it may be doubted whether a healthy warm-blooded animal suddenly and equally frozen through all its parts is dead, although it is not recoverable." If, as seems certainly to be the case, the animal dies because in the very act of trying to restore it some inequality in the process is almost sure to determine a fatal issue, some vital centre passing into the pectous state, the animal could not have been dead before restoration was attempted; for the dead cannot die again. Albeit, the outlook is not encouraging, at any rate so far as the use of cold alone for maintaining suspended animation in full-grown warm-blooded animals is concerned. Cold will, however, for a long time maintain ready for motion active organs locally subject to it Even after death this effect of cold "may be locally demonstrated," Dr. Richardson tells us, "and has sometimes been so demonstrated to the wonder of the world." "For instance, on January 17, in the year 1803, Aldini, the nephew of Galvani, created the greatest astonishment in London by a series of experiments which he conducted on a malefactor, twenty-six years old, named John Forster, who was executed at Newgate, and whose body, an hour after execution, was delivered over to Mr. Keate, Master of the College of Surgeons, for research. The body had been exposed for an hour to an atmosphere two degrees below freezing-point,[75] and from that cause, though Aldini does not seem to have recognised the fact, the voluntary muscles retained their irritability to such a degree that when Aldini began to pass voltaic currents through the body, some of the bystanders seem to have concluded that the unfortunate malefactor had come again to life. It is significant also that Aldini in his report says that his object was not to produce reanimation, but to obtain a practical knowledge how far galvanism might be employed as an auxiliary to revive persons who were accidentally suffocated, as though he himself were in some doubt,"—that is, not in doubt only about the power of galvanism, but in doubt whether Forster had been restored to life for a while, or not! Dr. Richardson has himself repeated, on lower animals, these experiments of Aldini's, except that the animals on which he has experimented have passed into death under chloroform, not through suffocation. His object, in fact, was to determine the best treatment for human beings who sink under chloroform and other anæsthetics. He finds that in warm weather he fails to get the same results. Noticing this, he says, "I experimented at and below the freezing-point, and then found that both by the electrical discharge, and by injection of water heated to 130 degrees" (again this terrible inexactness of expression) "into the muscles through the arteries, active muscular movements could be produced in warm-blooded animals many hours after death. Thus, for lecture experiment, I have removed one muscle from the body of an animal that had slept to death from chloroform, and putting the muscle in a glass tube surrounded with ice and salt, I have kept it for several days in a condition for its making a final muscular contraction, and, by gently thawing it, have made it, in the act of final contraction, do some mechanical work, such as moving a long needle on the face of a dial, or discharging a pistol. In muscles so removed from the body and preserved ready for motion there is, however, only one final act. For as the blood and nervous supply are both cut off from it, there is nothing left in it but the reserved something that was fixed by the cold. But I do not see any reason why this should not be maintained in reservation for weeks or months, as easily as for days, in a fixed cold atmosphere."
Cold being, however, obviously insufficient of itself for the suspension of active life in warm-blooded animals, at least if such life is eventually to be restored, let us next consider some of the agencies which either alone or aided by cold may suspend without destroying life.
The first known of all such agencies was mandragora. Dioscorides describes a wine, called morion, which was made from the leaves and the root of mandragora, and possessed properties resembling those of chloral hydrate. That it must have been an effective narcotic is shown by the circumstance that painful operations were performed on patients subjected to its influence, without their suffering the least pain, or even feeling. The sleep thus produced lasted several hours. Dr. Richardson considers that the use of this agent was probably continued until the twelfth or thirteenth century. "From the use of it doubtless came," he says, "the Shaksperian legend of Juliet." He strangely omits to notice that Shakspeare elsewhere speaks of this narcotic by name, where Iago says of Othello:
"Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever med'cine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou own'dst yesterday."
Probably the use of mandragora as a narcotic may have continued much later than the thirteenth century. In earlier times it was certainly used as opium is now used, not for medicinal purposes, but to produce for a while an agreeable sensation of dreamy drowsiness. "There were those," says Dr. Richardson, in his interesting article on Narcotics in the Contemporary Review for July last, "who drank of it for taste or pleasure, and who were spoken of as 'mandragorites,' as we might speak of 'alcoholists' or 'chloralists.' They passed into the land of sleep and dream, and waking up in scare and alarm were the screaming mandrakes of an ancient civilization." He has himself made the "morion" of the ancients, dispensing the prescription of Dioscorides and Pliny. "The same chemist, Mr. Hanbury," he says, "who first put chloral into my hands for experiment, also procured for me the root of the true mandragora. From that root I made the morion, tested it on myself, tried its effects, and re-proved, after a lapse perhaps of four or five centuries, that it had all the properties originally ascribed to it."
The "deadly nightshade" has similar properties. (In fact, morion was originally made from the Atropa belladonna, not from its ally the Atropa mandragora.) In 1851, Dr. Richardson attended two children who were poisoned for a time from eating the berries and chewing the leaves of the nightshade, which they had gathered near Richmond. They were brought home insensible, he says, "and they lay in a condition of suspended life for seven hours, the greatest care being required to detect either the respiration or the movements of the heart; they nevertheless recovered."
With the nitrite of amyl, Dr. Richardson has suspended the life of a frog for nine days, yet the creature was then restored to full and vigorous life. He has shown also that the same power of suspension, though in less degree, "could be produced in warm-blooded animals, and that the heart of a warm-blooded animal would contract for a period of eighteen hours after apparent death." The action of nitrite of amyl seems to resemble that of cold. In the pleasing language of the doctors, "it prevents the pectous change of colloidal matter, and so prevents rigor mortis, coagulation of blood, and solidification of nervous centres and cords." So long as this change is prevented, active life can be restored. But when in these experiments "the pectous change occurred, all was over, and resolution into new forms of matter by putrefaction was the result." From the analogy of some of the symptoms resulting from the use of nitrite of amyl with the symptoms of catalepsy, Dr. Richardson has "ventured to suggest that under some abnormal conditions the human body itself, in its own chemistry, may produce an agent which causes the suspended life observed during the cataleptic condition." The suggestion has an interest apart from the question of the possibility of safely suspending animation for considerable periods of time: it might be possible to detect the nature of the agent thus produced by the chemistry of the human body (if the theory is correct), and thus to learn how its power might be counteracted.
Chloral hydrate seems singularly efficient in producing the semblance of death,—so completely, indeed, as to deceive even the elect. Dr. Richardson states that at the meeting of the British Association at Exeter, some pigeons which had been put to sleep by the needle injection of a large dose of chloral, "fell into such complete resemblance of death that they passed for dead among an audience containing many physiologists and other men of science. For my own part," he proceeds, "I could detect no sign of life in them, and they were laid in one of the out-offices of the museum of the infirmary as dead. In this condition they were left late at night, but in the following morning they were found alive, and as well as if nothing hurtful had happened to them." Similar effects seem to be produced by the deadly poisons cyanogen gas and hydrocyanic acid, though in the following case, narrated by Dr. Richardson, the animal experimented upon (not with the idea of eventually restoring it to life) belonged to a race so specially tenacious of life that some may consider only one of its proverbial nine lives to have been affected. In the laboratory of a large drug establishment a cat, "by request of its owner, was killed, as was assumed, instantaneously and painlessly by a large dose of Scheele's acid. The animal appeared to die without a pang, and, presenting every appearance of death, was laid in a sink to be removed on the next morning. At night the animal was lying still in form of death in the tank beneath a tap. In the morning it was found alive and well, but with the fur wet from the dropping of water from the tap." This fact was communicated to Dr. Richardson by an eminent chemist under whose direct observation it occurred, in corroboration of an observation of his own similar in character.
Our old friend alcohol (if friend it can be called) possesses the power of suspending active vitality without destroying life, or at any rate without depriving the muscles of their excitability. Dr. Richardson records the case of a drunken man who, while on the ice at the Welsh Harp lake, fell into the water through an opening in the ice, and was for more than fifteen minutes completely immersed. He was extricated to all appearance dead, but under artificial respiration was restored to consciousness, though he did not survive for many hours. On the whole, alcoholic suspension of life does not appear to be the best method available. To test it, the patient must first get "very, very drunk," and even then, like the soldiers in the old song, must go on drinking, lest the experiment should terminate simply in the fiasco of a drunken sleep.
The last agent for suspending life referred to by Dr. Richardson is pure oxygen. But he has not yet obtained such information on the power of oxygen in this respect as he hopes to do.
Summing up the results of the various experiments made with narcotics and other agents for suspending life, Dr. Richardson remarks that much is already known in the world of science in respect to the suspension of animal life by artificial means: "cold as well as various chemical agents has this power, and it is worthy of note that cold, together with the agents named, is antiseptic, as though whatever suspended living action, suspended also by some necessary and correlative influence the process of putrefactive change." He points out that if the news from Brisbane were reliable, it would be clear that what had been done had been effected by the combination of one of the chemical agents above named, or of a similar agent, with cold. The only question which would remain as of moment is, not whether a new principle has been developed, but whether in matter of detail a new product has been discovered which, better than any of the agents we already possess, destroys and suspends animation. "In organic chemistry," he proceeds, "there are, I doubt not, hundreds of substances which, like mandragora and nitrite of amyl, would suspend the vital process, and it may be a new experimenter has met with such an agent. It is not incredible, indeed, that the Indian Fakirs possess a vegetable extract or essence which possesses the same power, and by means of which they perform their as yet unexplained feat of prolonged living burial." But he is careful to note the weak points of the Australian story—viz., first, the statement that the method used is a secret, "for men of true science know no such word;" secondly, that the experimenter has himself to go to America to procure more supplies of his agents; and, thirdly, that he requires two agents, one of which is an antidote to the other. As respects this third point, he asks very pertinently how an antidote can be absorbed and enter into the circulation in a body practically dead.
It is, of course, now well known that the whole story was a hoax, and a mischievous one. Several Australian farmers travelled long distances to Sydney to make inquiries about a method which promised such important results, only to find that there was not a particle of truth in the story.
Richard A. Proctor.