“It was only last year that we commented in our columns upon the ‘signs of death,’ drawing attention to the more important criteria by which a skilful observer may avoid mistaking cases of so-called suspended animation from actual disease. Quite recently two instances have been recorded, in which, if report be true, it would seem there is still room for maturing the judgment upon the question herein raised. At Saumur a young man afflicted with a contagious disease apparently died suddenly. His body was enshrouded and coffined, but as the undertaker’s men were carrying the ‘remains’ to their last resting-place they heard what they believed to be a knocking against the coffin-lid, and the sound was repeated in the grave. Instead of testing at once the evidence of their senses, they, in accordance with judicial custom, sent for the Mayor, in whose presence the lid was removed from the coffin. Whereupon, to the horror of the spectators, it was observed that the dead man had only just succumbed to asphyxia. The above narrative seems on the face of it too ghastly to be true, especially as the occupant of the coffin must have been shut up in a space containing oxygen in quantity totally inadequate to sustain an approximation to ordinary breathing. But in cataleptic and similar states the organic functions are reduced to the lowest ebb, and history records several instances in which, for a time at least, the determination of the living state was a matter of uncertainty. In our issue of the 15th inst., p. 129, the reader will find an account of ‘Post-mortem Irritability of Muscle,’ in which the phenomenon was manifested in a marked degree two hours after death from a chronic wasting disorder--a condition which favours early extinction of vital action in muscle. It may be argued, then, with some show of reasonableness, that it is quite possible for the heart to stand still, as it were, and yet retain the power of action, although experience tells us but little on the question as regards the human subject. Experiments on the lower animals, however, show that over-distension of the right cavities of the heart causes cessation of cardiac contraction, and that relief from the distension may be followed by resumption of the function of contractibility. It must not be forgotten that an analogous condition is witnessed at times in patients suffering from capillary bronchitis or other physical states underlying acute distension of the right heart; for, in these cases, venesection is not uncommonly instrumental in arresting the rapidly failing cardiac contractions. The second case of apparent death alluded to above happened in ‘the land of big things.’ An inhabitant of Mount Joy, Paramatta, was believed to be dead, and his supposed remains were about to be committed to the earth, when a mourning relative startled the bystanders by exclaiming, ‘I must see my father once more; something tells me he is not dead.’