The last cause of suffocation which we have to mention is mechanical obstruction, from the entrance of foreign bodies into the aperture of the glottis; instances of this kind are too numerous and familiar to require many observations: it is thus that _Anacreon_ is said to have perished from a grape-seed; _Gilbert_, the poet, terminated his existence in a similar manner; he was a man of great appetite, and in the midst of a festival went into a neighbouring room, but did not return to the great surprise of his convivial companions. He was found stretched on a couch without any signs of life. The assistance administered by his kind but uninformed friends was useless; on opening the body a small piece of mutton was found, that had stopped at the entrance of the larynx, and completely prevented the passage of air into this organ. In Oct. 1821, two inquisitions were taken at Mildenhall, before the Coroner of Bury St. Edmonds in Suffolk; in the one case it appeared that _John Harris_ had eaten some honey, from the honey-comb, and that a bee, having been concealed in it, entered the glottis, and occasioned almost immediate death by suffocation; the other case was that of an infant, _Mary Bacon_, who fell with her face upon a quantity of slacked lime, when a particle of it getting into the wind-pipe, produced inflammation of the lungs, and sloughing of the trachea, of which she died. We have no doubt but that persons, during the state of intoxication, or that of a spasmodic paroxysm, have often perished from suffocation, when the death has been attributed to other causes; if the stomach should reject its contents during a state of insensibility[51], such an occurrence is by no means unlikely. We have lately received the history of a case of this description, which occurred in the St. James’s workhouse, and fell under the particular notice of Mr. _Alcock_. The patient was seized after a hearty meal of pork with an epileptic fit, during which he died; when upon opening the trachea, it was found to contain a quantity of animal matter resembling the pork upon which he had recently dined. 8. DEATH BY EXPOSURE TO COLD. That an animal must perish as soon as the temperature of the medium in which it lives ceases to preserve the blood in a state of fluidity, is one of those self-evident propositions which scarcely requires notice, much less explanation; but that a degree of cold not sufficiently intense to occasion any physical changes upon the constituent parts of the body should extinguish its vitality is a fact, whose history involves some of the most interesting questions of physiology.