This was the _peine fort & dure_ of our ancient law, which was inflicted on prisoners who stood mute out of malice, or who feigned themselves mad, or challenged peremptorily more than the number of Jurors allowed by law, thus refusing their legal trial. “The manner of inflicting this punishment may be best found from the Books of Entries and other law books, all of which generally agree, that the prisoner shall be remanded to the place from whence he came, and put into some low dark room, and there laid on his back without any manner of covering, except for the privy parts, and that as many weights be laid upon him as he can bear and more, and that he shall have no manner of sustenance but the worst bread and water, and that he shall not eat the same day in which he drinks, nor drink the same day on which he eats, and that he shall so continue till he die.” Some authorities say till he answers. See 2 _Hawk. P. C._ 330. _c._ 30. § 16. 4 _Bl. Com._ _p._ 319. _Jac._ Law Dict. tit. Mute. The memory of this barbarous punishment remains “as a monument of the savage rapacity with which the lordly tyrants of feudal antiquity hunted after escheats and forfeitures,” for when the criminal died mute, the lord in some cases lost his escheat; (see 4 _Bl. Com._ 323). But its execution is no longer permitted by our laws. By Stat. 12 _Geo._ 3. c. 20, sentence may be passed on those who stand mute as if they had been found or pleaded guilty. Footnote 51: This, however, can but rarely occur; and it seems to have been wisely ordained by Nature, that the stomach should lose the power of rejecting its contents, whenever the brain loses its sensibility. See _Paris’s_ Pharmacologia, edit. 5, vol. 1, p. 150. Footnote 52: Manuscript Notes. Footnote 53: _Dr. Badenoch_ has very satisfactorily shewn that the _Coup de Soleil_ kills by producing apoplexy. Footnote 54: This does not hold universally, for _Beccaria_ mentions the case of a man whose body became exceedingly stiff, very shortly after having been struck dead by lightning;—and in one of Mr. _Brodie’s_ experiments, the muscles of a Guinea pig killed by electricity became stiff. Footnote 55: Manuscript Notes. Footnote 56: _Mayer_ directed his attention very particularly to the appearances which were thus produced, and had drawings made of them. It would appear that they most commonly passed in the direction of the spine. In the First Volume of the Philosophical Transactions, there is an account of the dissection of a man killed by lightning, but it contains nothing remarkable. Footnote 57: See also an account of a thunder-storm, by Mr. _Brydone_, in the 77th vol. of Phil. Trans. Footnote 58: _Morgagni_ de Sedibus et Causis Morb. Epist. 68. No. 6 and 7. Footnote 59: _Hippocrat._ Aphor. 13. Sect. 2. Footnote 60: Osservaz: intorno agli Anim. viventi, etc. No. 3 et 4. Footnote 61: