The breathing becomes slow and feeble, and is often interrupted by deep sighs. As Gratiolet remarks, whenever our attention is long concentrated on any subject, we forget to breathe, and then relieve ourselves by a deep inspiration; but the sighs of a sorrowful person, owing to his slow respiration and languid circulation, are eminently characteristic.[701] As the grief of a person in this state occasionally recurs and increases into a paroxysm, spasms affect the respiratory muscles, and he feels as if something, the so-called _globus hystericus_, was rising in his throat. These spasmodic movements are clearly allied to the sobbing of children, and are remnants of those severer spasms which occur when a person is said to choke from excessive grief.[702] _Obliquity of the eyebrows_.—Two points alone in the above description require further elucidation, and these are very curious ones; namely, the raising of the inner ends of the eyebrows, and the drawing down of the corners of the mouth. With respect to the eyebrows, they may occasionally be seen to assume an oblique position in persons suffering from deep dejection or anxiety; for instance, I have observed this movement in a mother whilst speaking about her sick son; and it is sometimes excited by quite trifling or momentary causes of real or pretended distress. The eyebrows assume this position owing to the contraction of certain muscles (namely, the orbiculars, corrugators, and pyramidals of the nose, which together tend to lower and contract the eyebrows) being partially cheeked by the more powerful action of the central fasciæ of the frontal muscle. These latter fasciæ by their contraction raise the inner ends alone of the eyebrows; and as the corrugators at the same time draw the eyebrows together, their inner ends become puckered into a fold or lump. This fold is a highly characteristic point in the appearance of the eyebrows when rendered oblique, as may be seen in figs. 2 and 5, Plate II. The eyebrows are at the same time somewhat roughened, owing to the hairs being made to project. Dr. J. Crichton Browne has also often noticed in melancholic patients who keep their eyebrows persistently oblique, “a peculiar acute arching of the upper eyelid.” A trace of this may be observed by comparing the right and left eyelids of the young man in the photograph (fig. 2, Plate II.); for he was not able to act equally on both eyebrows. This is also shown by the unequal furrows on the two sides of his forehead. The acute arching of the eyelids depends, I believe, on the inner end alone of the eyebrows being raised; for when the whole eyebrow is elevated and arched, the upper eyelid follows in a slight degree the same movement. Obliquity of the Eyebrows. Plate II