Many examples of this disease have been afforded by the records of apparent death. I am well acquainted with a lady who, in early childhood, had been laid out for burial at the supposed termination of some infantile illness. Her mother alone insisted that the child was still alive. After some time spent in weeping and expostulation, she applied a blister to the thorax of the babe. This soon excited evidences of painful irritation, followed by a complete recovery. Still more instructive is the case, narrated by Rosenthal,[27] of a young woman, twenty-four years of age, who, in consequence of violent emotional excitement, became unconscious, and presented no signs of life, though tested by placing a mirror before the mouth, and by dropping melted sealing-wax upon the skin. On raising her eyelids, the pupils gave no reaction to light; the limbs remained perfectly flaccid, and the radial arteries were pulseless. Careful auscultation, however, detected a very feeble and intermittent sound in the cardiac region. The walls of the chest exhibited no movement, but the lateral surfaces of the abdomen presented a slow and almost imperceptible oscillation. Gentle faradization of the muscles and nerves of the face, arm, and hand, excited definite muscular contractions. By this method Rosenthal became satisfied that, although the patient had remained for thirty-two hours in this condition, she was only apparently dead. In fact, after continuing forty-four hours in a state of suspended animation, she awoke spontaneously, made a rapid recovery, and seemed to enjoy as comfortable health as an excitable, nervous temperament would permit. Certain authors make a distinction between lethargy and apparent death; but the difference is one of degree rather than of kind. The movements of respiration and of circulation, though greatly enfeebled, are readily observed in ordinary forms of lethargy; but in apparent death the pulse can no longer be discovered, and nothing more than the faintest sound can be distinguished in the region of the heart. It, therefore, becomes important to have within reach a crucial test of the persistence of general vitality. Such evidence, according to Rosenthal, is furnished by the faradaic current. Within two or three hours after actual death, the muscles cease to respond to the induced current; but in apparent death this form of electro-muscular contractility never disappears. Every other test that has been proposed has failed under certain circumstances. Observation of the changes in muscular temperature during electrical excitation is a method better adapted to the laboratory than for clinical practice.