Although our researches into the causes and phenomena of asphyxia, or suspended animation, will afford, on many occasions, but very scanty encouragement with regard to the extent and value of the resources of art, yet we apprehend that to the intelligent practitioner they will not on that account be less acceptable; for to him it must be well known, that the detection of error is the first step in the discovery of truth, and although the tendency of the present investigation will be to reject, as useless, many of those plans of treatment which have long enjoyed the confidence of the public and the profession; yet it will suggest the application of some that have not hitherto been duly appreciated, and regulate that of others whose efficiency entirely depends upon the time and manner of their administration. But the fact is not to be concealed, that the medical profession, as well as the public, have long been too sanguine in their estimate of the probabilities of recovery by art, in cases where life is suddenly arrested by the operation of external causes; and upon this occasion, the establishment of the “ROYAL HUMANE SOCIETY for the recovery of persons apparently dead,” requires some notice, in relation to the possible extent of its successful exertions. Without some explanation it will be impossible to reconcile the reports of that philanthropic institution, with the physiological views which we have attempted to establish in the present work; it therefore becomes a part of our duty to explain the nature of the fallacies into which the witnesses and reporters of cases of suspended animation appear to us to have been unconsciously betrayed, and which have so frequently bestowed upon fable the colour of truth, and given to vague report, the apparent stability of credible testimony. In the first place we would observe, that in those cases in which a long interval is stated to have occurred between the suspension of breathing, from drowning, and the restoration of that function by art, it is probable that the anxiety of by-standers who witnessed the struggles, and the impossibility of justly appreciating the lapse of time in such moments of anxiety[67] and distress, have led to the erroneous statements with which the subject is embarrassed. There is, moreover, another fallacy into which the anxious observer is very likely to fall,—the sufferer may have breathed unobserved during the alleged interval of asphyxia; and if this fact be admitted, we at once reduce some of the most incredible of these reports to the rational standard of physiological probability. Nor shall we hesitate in the present chapter to offer our remarks upon the plan of recovery proposed by this society with as much freedom, and as little reserve, as we have ventured to question the literal accuracy of their reports. But while, thus fortified by physiological arguments, we profess to discredit many of the results stated by this society, let it not be supposed that we