The case of Dr. Wollaston the physician and chemical philosopher is to the same effect. “Some time before his life was finally extinguished he was seen to be pale, as if there was scarcely any circulation of blood going on--motionless, and to all appearance in a state of complete insensibility. Being in this condition, his friends who were watching round him, observed some motions of the hand which was not affected by the paralysis. After some time it occurred to them, that he wished to have a pencil and paper, and these having been supplied, he contrived to write some figures in arithmetical progression, which however imperfectly scrawled, were yet sufficiently legible. It was supposed that he had overheard some remarks respecting the state in which he was, and that his object was to show, that he preserved his sensibility and consciousness. Something like this occurred some hours afterwards, and immediately before he died, but the scrawl of these last moments could not be deciphered.”[38] “I have been curious,” writes Sir Benjamin Brodie in commenting on these cases, “to watch the state of dying persons in this respect, and I am satisfied,” (and I may add, my own experience confirms Sir Benjamin Brodie’s statement) “that, where an ordinary observer would not for an instant doubt that the individual is in a state of complete stupor, the mind is often active even at the very moment of death. A friend of mine, who had been for many years the excellent chaplain of a large hospital, informed me, that his still larger experience had led him to the same conclusion.”[39] Instances such as these should teach the physician and all who are about the dying, to be careful neither to say, nor do anything in the presence of the patient, which they would wish him not to hear. Their bearing on religious offices to the dying is obvious. * * * * * Sometimes, immediately preceding the very act of death, the eyelids are raised, and a look of recognition of those around seems to be permitted to the dying man. Less often there is an expression of agony in the eye. “It is consolatory to know,” says Sir Charles Bell, “that this does not indicate suffering, but increasing insensibility. The pupils are turned upwards and inwards. This is especially observed in those who are expiring from loss of blood. It is the strabismus patheticus orantium of Boerhaave.”[40]