I remember the case of a cataleptic girl, related by the Abbé Menon, who was doomed to dissection; the first stroke of the _scalpel_ awoke her, and she lived. Cardinal Sommaglia was not so fortunate. He fell into _syncope_ from intense grief, and it was decided that he should be opened and embalmed. As the surgeon’s knife punctured the lungs, the heart throbbed, and the cardinal attempted to avert the knife with his hand; but the _die_ was cast, and he shortly _died_. The Abbé Prevost was also sacrificed in this way. As Vesalius, the physician of Philip II., was opening the thorax of a Spanish gentleman, the heart palpitated. Death also occurred here. Vesalius was brought before the Inquisition, but was pardoned. A gentleman was seized, apparently with apoplexy, while at cards. A vein was opened in both arms, but _no blood flowed_. He was placed in a room with two watchers, who slept, alas! too long; for in the morning the room was _deluged with blood_ from the punctures, and his life was gone. These are indeed unhappy instances of the errors of omission and commission entailed on the fallibility of science. I believe a French author, Bruhier, has collected fifty-two cases of persons buried alive, four which were dissected prematurely, fifty-three which recovered, and seventy-two which were falsely reported dead. ASTR. There is a solemn problem associated with this, on which I have often reflected, the solution of which, I presume, your philosophy _cannot_ offer to us. At what moment would the mind cease to influence the body, were there no recovery from the trance? I have sometimes felt a mysterious influence, apart, I am sure, from philosophy, that whispered me, the life, which I had watched in its ebb, was at length gone. Yet, of the transit of an immaterial spirit, although convinced of the sublime truth, it is certain we _know_ nothing. EV. Nothing _demonstrative_. It is not, however, when the body _seems_ dead, for consciousness, or the _systemic_ life, may for awhile be suspended by mere cold. But dissolution is _that point_, unknown to us, when the principle of life (whether that be the influence of _arterial_ blood, or electricity, magnetism, or galvanism,) is not excitable—when _molecular_ death has ensued; not even irritability, that _vis insita_ or _vis nervosa_ of Haller, remaining. Of course mind must instantly depart on the commencement of _decomposition_, the brain being _then_ totally incompatible with mind. The _stoics_ believed the soul to occupy the body _until it was putrified_, and resolved into its _materia prima_.