I at once used friction and irritants, and in an hour and a half the respiration increased. The patient opened her eyes, and, struck with the funereal paraphernalia around her, returned to consciousness, and said, 'I am too young to die.'" All this was followed by a ten hours' sleep. Convalescence proceeded rapidly, and the girl became free from all her nervous troubles. During her crisis she heard everything. She quoted some Latin words that Mr. Franck had used. Her most fearful agony had been to hear the preparations for her burial without being able to get rid of her torpor. Medical dictionaries are full of anecdotes of this nature, but I shall cite but two more. On the 10th of November, 1812, during the fatal retreat from Russia, Commandant Tascher, desiring to bring back to France the body of his general, who had been killed by a bullet, and who had been buried since the day before, disinterred him, and, upon putting him into a landau, and noticing that he was still breathing, brought him to life again by dint of care. A long time afterward this same general was one of the pall bearers at the funeral obsequies of the aide-de-camp who had buried him. In 1826 a young priest returned to life at the moment the bishop of the diocese was pronouncing the _De Profundis_ over his body. Forty years afterward, this priest, who had become Cardinal Donnett, preached a feeling sermon upon the danger of premature burial. I trust I have now sufficiently prepared the mind of the reader for an examination of the phenomena of the voluntary suspension of life that I shall now treat of. The body of an animal may be compared to a machine that converts the food that it receives into motion. It receives nothing, it will produce nothing; but there is no reason why it should get out of order if it is not deteriorated by external agents. The legendary rustic who wanted to accustom his ass to go without food was therefore theoretically wrong only because he at the same time wanted the animal to work. The whole difficulty consists in breaking with old habits. To return to the comparison that we just made, we shall run the risk of exploding the boiler of a steam engine if we heat it or cool it abruptly, but we can run it very slowly and for a very long time with but very little fuel. We may even preserve a little fire under the ashes, and this, although it may not be capable of setting the parts running, will suffice later on to revivify the fireplace after it has been charged anew with fuel.