6. A disease cannot always be cured by removing the cause which brought it on: it is necessary also to repair the injury done to the organization. This is exemplified in the case of the dog just mentioned. Taking him out of the vapour is not sufficient for his recovery, because the organization of the body is injured; the cold water by contracting the vessels repairs the injury, and the cure is completed. To the entire preservation of this organization it is probably owing, that people have frequently recovered after being thought dead for a long time.[45] [45] Dr. Anthony Fothergill, in his prize dissertation upon the suspension of vital action, quotes some experiments of Dr. Kite, in which he was able to restore to life animals that had been immersed in water for eight, ten or twelve minutes, though he acknowledges that this operation, though performed with great attention, often failed; while other animals, that had been longer immersed, recovered spontaneously. He further adds, that if it be not attempted before the convulsions of the animal cease, which on an average of many experiments happens in about eleven minutes and a half, it will not be sufficient to renew the vital motions. But, “among the human species (says Dr. Fothergill) there are not wanting well authenticated instances of spontaneous recovery at an incomparably longer interval, and after every external mark of life had disappeared. Such is the latent energy of the heart, that it sometimes, after remaining several hours quiescent, renews on a sudden the secret springs of life, surmounts the barriers of the resisting blood, and restores circulation with all the other functions. Hence the unexpected recoveries from death-like syncope brought on by sudden terror, or great effusions of blood, even after the funeral obsequies have been prepared. Hence some persons have accidentally been brought to life, even after interment, by the rude motion produced in sacrilegious attempts to wrest rings or bracelets from the apparently dead body.”