I read, too, that Shorigny, an hysterical girl in Paris, was watched daily by her physician, after he was assured by the friends that she was dead. On the sixth day, the cloth covering was seen to move, the eyes soon after opened, and she gradually recovered. EV. It is one of the anomalies of our science, that _similar_ causes will often produce _opposite_ effects. We may be thrown into trance by fright; and intense alarm may be the cause of recovery. I may relate an oriental anecdote as an analogy, which, however, I beg you to receive with some reservation. A Persian, at the siege of Sardis, was about to kill Crœsus, whom he did not recognise. By his side was the king’s dumb child, who, in a sudden paroxysm of agony, screamed out, “Kill not Crœsus.” From this instant (as it were a miracle), Herodotus writes, his speech was fully restored! We learn from Bourgeois, in 1838, that a medical man, from the sudden influence of grief, sunk into a cataleptic state, but his consciousness never left him. The lamentations of his wife, the sympathetic condolence of his medical friends, and the arrangements regarding his funeral, were to him distinctly audible. He knew that he was in his coffin, and that there was a solemn procession following him to the grave. As the solemn words of “Earth to earth” were uttered, and the dust fell on his coffin lid, the consciousness of this, and his horror at his impending fate, burst the fetters of his icy trance—he shrieked aloud, and was saved. In the “Psychological Magazine” we read of a lady who fell into a state of catalepsy, after a violent nervous disorder. “It seemed to her, as if in a dream, that she was really dead. Yet she was perfectly conscious of all that happened around her in this dreadful state. She distinctly heard her friends speaking, and lamenting her death, at the side of her coffin; she felt them pull on her dead clothes, and lay her in it. This feeling produced a mental anxiety which was indescribable. She tried to cry, but her soul was without power, and could not act on her body. She had the contradictory feeling, as if she were in her own body, and yet not in it, at one and the same time. It was equally impossible for her to stretch out her arm, or to open her eyes, as to cry, although she continually endeavoured to do so. The internal anguish of her mind was, however, at its utmost height, when the funeral hymns were sung, and when the lid of the coffin was about to be nailed on. The thought that she was to be buried alive was the first one which gave activity to her soul, and caused it to operate on her corporeal frame.” I have been assured that the soldier who has been placed in his grave by such an error, has been awoke in his coffin by the volley fired over him. Parallel with these are the instances in which vitality seemed to be instantly excited by acute pain.