and chemists do not regard as a poison the vegetable from which this powder is pre pared. Dr. Tidy at the time tried its effects upon a rabbit and a dog, and although ex periments on so limited a scale are by no means conclusive, still neither animal was affected by it. In the absence of evidence of other causes to account for death, the only assumption that could therefore be made was that the woman had taken the insect powder believing it to be poisonous, and through her own imagination caused her death. Some years ago Napoleon III., while emperor of France, permitted a French physician to experiment on a convict who was sentenced to death. The condemned man was delivered to the physician, who had him strapped to a table and blindfolded, ostensibly for the purpose of being bled to death. Near the drooping head was placed a vessel of water, which, by means of a siphon arrangement, trickled audibly into a basin below, at the same moment that a superficial scratch with a needle was made right across the culprit's neck; perfect silence was main tained, and in six minutes the man was dead. General Johnston, leader of the Confed
erate armies, tells of a case that came under his own observation. He, when a lieuten ant, learned that some acquaintances had concocted a plan for testing the power of imagination on the human system. The plan was that half-a-dozen of them should, apparently by accident, meet some particular individual and comment on his appearance of extreme illness. A healthy young man was selected for experiment, and the result of this joke was that he sickened and died. Another case is said to have occurred in a university town in Scotland. A college por ter having made himself particularly obnox ious to the students, they resolved to be revenged upon him. For this purpose they decoyed him into a room one night, held a mock inquiry into his bad behavior, and with a great show of outward solemnity sen tenced him to be decapitated, the execution to take place at once. The terrified porter was led to a quiet corner where stood a huge block and a keen axe; he was then blind folded and compelled to kneel and lay his head on the block. The executioner struck him on the neck with a wet towel, and the porter was lifted up — dead.
REMARKABLE RESUSCITATIONS AFTER EXECUTION. WE do not as a nation hang so many culprits as in bygone years. We may by and by cease to inflict this awful punish ment at all. But so long as law and relig ion and justice and public sentiment are considered to warrant the continuance of this ancient mode of retribution, so long there ought to be no mockery, no mistake, no trickery about it. If a man survives after hanging, without a proof of his innocence accompanying his recovery, it would be in finitely better to society (of his wretched self we say nothing) that he had not been hanged at all; seeing that the sense of a
just punishment would be swallowed up in a kind of pity for the novelty of his position. Now, such things have occurred sufficiently often to merit attention. Men have recov ered their lives — or rather retained life under nearly desperate circumstances —1 in spite of what seemed to be a due infliction of the punishment of death by suspension. For something like six hundred years, at any rate, such escapes have from time to time been recorded. In 1 264 there was a woman named Inetta de Balsham condemned to death for collu sion with robbers; she was hanged, and
