Medical writers have agreed, very generally, that “the death-struggle,” “the agony of death,” as it has long been termed is not what it appears, a stage of suffering. I am not satisfied—I say it reluctantly—I am not satisfied with these consolatory views, so ingeniously and plausibly advocated by Wilson Philip, and Symonds, Hufeland and Hoffman. I would they were true! But all the symptoms look like tokens or expressions of distress; we may hope that they are not always such in reality: but how can this be proved? Those who, having seemed to die, recovered afterward and declared that they had undergone no pain, do not convince me of the fact any more than the somnambulist, who upon awaking, assures me that he has not dreamed at all, after a whole night of action, and connected thought and effected purpose. His memory retains no traces of the questionable past; like that of the epileptic, who forgets the whole train of events, and is astonished after a horrible fit to find his tongue bitten, and his face and limbs bruised and swollen. Nay, some have proceeded to the paradoxical extreme of suggesting that certain modes of death are attended with pleasurable sensations, as for instance, hanging; and a late reviewer, who regards this sombre topic with a most cheerful eye, gives us instances which he considers in point. I have seen many men hung, forty at least, a strangely large number. In all, there were evidences of suffering, as far as could be judged by external appearances. It once happened that a certain set were slowly executed, owing to a maladroit arrangement of the scaffold upon which they stood, which gave way only at one end. The struggles of such as were half supported were dreadful, and those of them who could speak earnestly begged that their agonies should be put an end to. In former, nay, even in recent times, we are told that pirates and robbers have resorted to half-hanging, to extort confession as to hidden treasure. Is it possible that they can have so much mistaken the means they employ as thus to use pleasurable appliances for the purposes of torture?