In man himself a suspension of life, or at least phenomena that seem inseparable therefrom, has been observed many times. In the _Journal des Savants_ for 1741 we read that a Col. Russel, having witnessed the death of his wife, whom he tenderly loved, did not wish her buried, and threatened to kill any one who should attempt to remove the body before he witnessed its decomposition himself. Eight days passed by without the woman giving the slightest sign of life, "when, at a moment when he was holding her hand and shedding tears over her, the church bell began to ring, and, to his indescribable surprise, his wife sat up and said, 'It is the last stroke, we shall be too late.' She recovered." At a session of the Academy of Sciences, Oct. 17, 1864, Mr. Blaudet communicated a report upon a young woman of thirty summers who, being subject to nervous attacks, fell, after her crises, into a sort of lethargic sleep which lasted several weeks and sometimes several months. One of her sleeps, especially, lasted from the beginning of the year 1862 until March, 1863. Dr. Paul Levasseur relates that, in a certain English family, lethargy seemed to have become hereditary. The first case was exhibited in an old lady who remained for fifteen days in an immovable and insensible state, and who afterward, on regaining her consciousness, lived for quite a long time. Warned by this fact, the family preserved a young man for several weeks who appeared to be dead, but who came to life again. Dr. Pfendler, in an inaugural thesis (Paris, 1833), minutely describes a case of apparent death of which he himself was a witness. A young girl of Vienna at the age of 15 was attacked by a nervous affection that brought on violent crises followed by lethargic states which lasted three or four days. After a time she became so exhausted that the first physicians of the city declared that there was no more hope. It was not long, in fact, before she was observed to rise in her bed and fall back as if struck with death. "For four hours she appeared to me," says Dr. Pfendler, "completely inanimate. With Messrs. Franck and Schaeffer, I made every possible effort to rekindle the spark of life. Neither mirror, nor burned feather, nor ammonia, nor pricking succeeded in giving us a sign of sensibility. Galvanism was tried without the patient showing any contractility. Mr. Franck believed her to be dead, but nevertheless advised me to leave her on the bed. For twenty-eight hours no change supervened, although it was thought that a little putrefaction was observed. The death bell was sounded, the friends of the girl had dressed her in white and had crowned her with flowers, and all was arranged for her burial. Desiring to convince myself of the course of the putrefaction, I visited the body again, and found that no further advance had been made than before. What was my astonishment when I believed that I saw a slight respiratory motion. I looked again, and saw that I was not mistaken.