(5) Irritation of the throat with a feather.
(6) Smelling sal-ammoniac.
(7) Dropping from time to time a few drops of “extract of balm” or similar essences into the mouth.
Unless medical aid has meanwhile arrived, the application of these measures must be continued until the apparently dead comes, back to life, and begins to swallow, in which case he ought to have warm broth, tea, or wine, or until there is absolutely no doubt as to the total ineffectiveness of all attempts at reanimation.
CHAPTER XIV.
DURATION OF DEATH-COUNTERFEITS.
The differences observed in the length of time that persons have remained in this condition depended, doubtless, upon the constitutional peculiarities of the patients—such as strength or weakness—or upon the nature of the disease from which they may have suffered. Struve, in his Essay, pp. 34-98, says “that it depends upon the proportion of vital power in the individual. Hence children and young persons will endure longer than the aged. Also upon the nature of the element in which the accident happened, whether it contained greater or less proportion of oxygenated or carbonic acid gas, or other poisonous vapours. The latent vital power seems to be much longer preserved when animation has been suspended by cold. A man revived after being under snow forty hours. Persons apparently dead sometimes awake after an interval of seven days, as was the case with Lady Russell.... In the female sex, the suspension of vital power, spasms, fainting fits, etc., originating from a hysterical, feeble constitution, are not rare, nor is it improbable that the state of apparent death may be of longer duration with them; nay, it may be looked upon as a periodical disorder, in which all susceptibility of irritation is extinguished.” Struve further remarks, p. 98, “that the state in which the vital power is suspended, or in which there is a want of susceptibility of stimuli, consists of infinite modifications, from the momentary transient fainting fit, to a death-like torpor of a day’s duration. The susceptibility of irritation may be completely suppressed, and the apparently dead may be insensible of the strongest stimuli, such as the operation of the knife, and the effects of a red-hot iron.”
M. JOSAT’S OBSERVATIONS.