We have recently had the example of Dr. Tanner, who went forty days without any other nourishment than water. Not very long ago Liedovine de Schiedam, who had been bedridden for twenty years, affirmed that she had taken no food for eight of them. It is said that Saint Catharine of Sienna gradually accustomed herself to do without food, and that she lived twenty years in total abstinence. We know of several examples of prolonged sleep during which the sleeper naturally took no nourishment. In his Magic Disquisitions, Delvis cites the case of a countryman who slept for an entire autumn and winter. Pfendler relates that a certain young and hysterical woman fell twice into a deep slumber which each time lasted six months. In 1883 an _enceinte_ woman was found asleep on a bench in the Grand Armee Avenue. She was taken to the Beaujon Hospital, where she was delivered a few days after while still asleep, and it was not till the end of three months that she could be awakened from her lethargy. At this very moment, at Tremeille, a woman named Marguerite Bouyenvalle is sleeping a sleep that has lasted nearly a year, during which the only food that she has had is a few drops of soup daily. What is more remarkable, Dr. Fournier says in his Dictionary of Medical Sciences that he knew of a distinguished writer at Paris, who sometimes went for months at a time without taking anything but emollient drinks, while at the same time living along like other people. Respiration is certainly more necessary to life than food is; but it is not absolutely indispensable, as we have seen in the cases of apparent death cited in our previous article. It is possible, through exercise, for a person to accustom himself, up to a certain point, to abstinence from air as he can from food. Those who dive for pearls, corals, or sponges succeed in remaining from two to three minutes under water. Miss Lurline, who exhibited in Paris in 1882, remained two and a half minutes beneath the water of her aquarium without breathing. In his treatise De la Nature, Henri de Rochas, physician to Louis XIII., gives six minutes as the maximum length of time that can elapse between successive inspirations of air. It is probable that this figure was based upon an observation of hibernating animals. In his Encyclopedic Dictionary, Dr. Dechambre relates the history of a Hindoo who hid himself in the waters of the Ganges where women were bathing, seized one of them by the legs, drowned her, and then removed her jewels. Her disappearance was attributed to crocodiles. One woman who succeeded in escaping him denounced the assassin, who was seized and hanged in 1817.