These experiments all tend to show that by far the most efficient method of performing artificial respiration is that of intermittent pressure upon the lower ribs with the subject in the prone position or face downward. It is also the easiest to perform, requiring practically no exertion, as the weight of the operator’s body produces the effect, and the swinging forwards and backwards of the body some thirteen times a minute, which alone is required, is by no means fatiguing, and has the further great advantage that it can be effectively carried out by one person.
See Taylor, Medical Jurisprudence; “Description of a simple and efficient method of performing artificial respiration in the human subject, especially in cases of drowning,” by E. A. Schäfer, F.R.S. (vol. 87, Medico-Chirurgical Society’s Transactions); “The relative efficiency of certain methods of performing artificial respiration in man,” by E. A. Schäfer, F.R.S. (vol. 23, part i. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh); A Method for the Treatment of the Apparently Drowned, by R. S. Bowles (London, 1903); Handbook of Instruction, Royal Life Saving Society (London, 1908).
(W. Hy.)
Penal Use of Drowning.—As a form of capital punishment, drowning was once common throughout Europe, but it is now only practised in Mahommedan countries and the Far East. Tacitus states that the ancient Germans hanged criminals of any rank, but those of the low classes were drowned beneath hurdles in fens and bogs. The Romans also drowned convicts. The Lex Cornelia ordained that parricides should be sewn in a sack with a dog, cock, viper and ape, and thrown into the sea. The law of ancient Burgundy ordered that an unfaithful wife should be smothered in mud. The Anglo-Saxon punishment for women guilty of theft was drowning. So usual was the penalty in the middle ages that grants of life and death jurisdiction were worded to be “cum fossa et furca” (i.e. “with drowning-pit and gallows”). The owner of Baynard’s Castle, London, in the reign of John, had powers of trying criminals, and his descendants long afterwards claimed the privileges, the most valued of which was the right of drowning in the Thames traitors taken within their jurisdiction. Drowning was the punishment ordained by Richard Cœur de Lion for any soldier of his army who killed a fellow-crusader during the passage to the Holy Land. Drowning was usually reserved for women as being the least brutal form of death-penalty, but occasionally a male criminal was so executed as a matter of favour. Thus in Scotland in 1526 a man convicted of theft and sacrilege was ordered to be drowned “by the queen’s special grace.” In 1611 a man was drowned at Edinburgh for stealing a lamb, and in 1623 eleven gipsy women suffered there. By that date the penalty was obsolete in England. It survived in Scotland till 1685 (the year of the drowning of the Wigtoun martyrs). The last execution by drowning in Switzerland was in 1652, in Austria 1776, in Iceland 1777; while in France during the Revolution the penalty was revived in the terrible Noyades carried out by the terrorist Jean Baptiste Carrier at Nantes. It was abolished in Russia at the beginning of the 18th century.
DROYSEN, JOHANN GUSTAV (1808-1884), German historian, was born on the 6th of July 1808 at Treptow in Pomerania. His father, Johann Christoph Droysen, was an army chaplain, in which capacity he was present at the celebrated siege of Kolberg in 1806-7. As a child young Droysen witnessed some of the military operations during the War of Liberation, for his father was pastor at Greifenhagen, in the immediate neighbourhood of Stettin, which was held by the French during the greater part of 1813. The impressions of these early years laid the foundation of the ardent attachment to Prussia which distinguished him, like so many other historians of his generation. He was educated at the gymnasium of Stettin and at the university of Berlin; in 1829 he became a master at the Graue Kloster (or Grey Friars), one of the oldest schools in Berlin; besides his work there he gave lectures at the university, from 1833 as privat-dozent, and from 1835 as professor, without a salary. During these years he was occupied with classical antiquity; he published a translation of Aeschylus and a paraphrase of Aristophanes, but the work by which he made himself known as a historian was his Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen (Berlin, 1833, and other editions), a book which still remains probably the best work on the subject. It was in some ways the herald of a new school of German historical thought, for it shows that idealization of power and success which he had learnt from the teaching of Hegel. It was followed by other volumes dealing with the successors of Alexander, published under the title of Geschichte des Hellenismus (Hamburg, 1836-1843). A new and revised edition of the whole work was published in 1885; it has been translated into French, but not into English.
In 1840 Droysen was appointed professor of history at Kiel. He was at once attracted into the political movement for the defence of the rights of the Elbe duchies, of which Kiel was the centre. Like his predecessor F. C. Dahlmann, he placed his historical learning at the service of the estates of Schleswig-Holstein and composed the address of 1844, in which the estates protested against the claim of the king of Denmark to alter the law of succession in the duchies. In 1848 he was elected a member of the Frankfort parliament, and acted as secretary to the committee for drawing up the constitution. He was a determined supporter of Prussian ascendancy, and was one of the first members to retire after the king of Prussia refused the imperial crown in 1849. During the next two years he continued to support the cause of the duchies, and in 1850, with Carl Samwer, he published a history of the dealings of Denmark with Schleswig-Holstein, Die Herzogthümer Schleswig-Holstein und das Königreich Dänemark seit dem Jahre 1806 (Hamburg, 1850). A translation was published in London in the same year under the title The Policy of Denmark towards the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. The work was one of great political importance, and had much to do with the formation of German public opinion on the rights of the duchies in their struggle with Denmark.
After 1851 it was impossible for him to remain at Kiel, and he was appointed to a professorship at Jena; in 1859 he was called to Berlin, where he remained till his death. In his later years he was almost entirely occupied with Prussian history. In 1851 he brought out a life of Count Yorck von Wartenburg (Berlin, 1851-1852, and many later editions), one of the best biographies in the German language, and then began his great work on the Geschichte der preussischen Politik (Berlin, 1855-1886). Seven volumes were published, the last not till after his death. It forms a complete history of the growth of the Prussian monarchy down to the year 1756. This, like all Droysen’s work, shows a strongly marked individuality, and a great power of tracing the manner in which important dynamic forces worked themselves out in history. It was this characteristic quality of comprehensiveness that also gave him so much influence as a teacher.
Droysen, who was twice married, died in Berlin on the 19th of June 1884. His eldest son, Gustav, is the author of several well-known historical works, namely, Gustav Adolf (Leipzig, 1869-1870); Herzog Bernhard von Weimar (Leipzig, 1885); an admirable Historischer Handatlas (Leipzig, 1885), and several writings on various events of the Thirty Years’ War. Another son, Hans Droysen, is the author of some works on Greek history and antiquities.
See M. Duncker, Johann Gustav Droysen, ein Nachruf (Berlin, 1885); and Dahlmann-Waitz, Quellenkunde der deutschen Geschichte (Leipzig, 1906).