Upon these appearances we have a few observations to offer, especially as they have given origin to some important questions; and first, with respect to _the presence of water in the stomach and lungs_, than which few indications, connected with the subject of drowning, have given occasion to greater controversy.[33] For since it hath been observed that water is rarely found in the stomach or lungs of a person who has been submerged after death, it was inferred that the presence of that fluid in these organs necessarily proved that the individual must have been plunged into the water during life. As a general proposition this may be admitted as correct, although it is liable to certain exceptions with which the medical jurist ought to be acquainted; we may, for instance, suppose a case, in which the submerged person may be so plunged at once under water, as to have been suffocated without his previously coming to the surface, and when _asphyxia_ has taken place, the powers of deglutition, on which the presence of water in the stomach wholly depends, are at an end; or we may suppose that the party in question faints from terror; a remarkable instance of this kind is quoted by _Foderè_,[34] from _Plater_, of a young woman, who having been condemned to be drowned for infanticide, fainted at the moment she was plunged in the water, and having remained for a quarter of an hour under its surface, recovered after being drawn out.[35] With respect to the presence of water in the bronchiæ and lungs, we may observe that, in the violent struggles of a drowning man, a certain portion of water generally passes the epiglottis; and being immediately mixed with the air and mucus of the trachea, constitutes that frothy mucus, which we have described as being so highly characteristic of this species of violent death; although we are not to conclude with _Larrey_, that it is the immediate cause of dissolution in such cases. The quantity of water, however, thus forced into the pulmonary structure, is extremely small, for its entrance is powerfully opposed by a spasm of the muscles of the glottis;[36] were it to occur in any considerable quantity, and to appear in its fluid state, instead of that of froth, the influence would clearly be, that _it had passed in after death_. Although the presence of this frothy matter must be considered as a strong presumptive proof that the person found in the water had perished by drowning, the converse of this proposition is by no means established by the absence of such an indication.