nature. 1. The spirits continually require, an expansive motion in the nerves and ventricles of the brain. 2. The pulsation of the heart is required sixty times in a minute. 3. Respiration, twenty times in a minute. 4. Sleep and aliment, once in three days. And, 5. A power of alimentation, suppose after eighty years of age. And if any of these requisites are wanting, death ensues. But there seem to be three more certain and evident avenues of death; viz. 1. Want of motion in the spirits. 2. Want of coolness, or ventillation. And 3. Want of aliment.

1. 'Tis an error to imagine, that a living spirit should be perpetually generated and extinguished, like flame; without being able to last for some considerable time. Even flame itself is not thus generated, of its own nature; but only because it acts among things that are not favourable to it; for one flame is durable in another : but the living spirit resides among things that greatly affect and delight it; and therefore as flame is a momentary, and air a permanent substance, the living spirit seems to be of a middle nature between both.

2. We observed at first setting out, that the present enquiry was not concerned with the decay of the spirits, occasioned by the destruction of the organs, through distempers and violence; though this also terminates in the same three

avenues. And thus much for the form and nature of death.

There are two grand harbingers of death; the one detached from the head, the other from the heart, viz. convulsions, and a labouring pulse: for the mortal hiccup is a kind of convulsion. And the mortal labouring of the pulse has a remarkable quickness; the heart trembling towards the article of death, and almost confounding its systole and diastole. This dying pulse is also attended with a debility and lowness; and frequently a great intermission of the stroke: the motion of the heart then failing; or being no longer able to rise with strength and regularity.

Death is likewise preceded, and denoted near at hand, by great inquietude and tossing of the body; a catching unsteady motion of the fingers, as if to take up somewhat from the bed clothes; grasping hard, and holding strong with the hands; grinding of the teeth; a hollow voice; trembling of the under-jaw; paleness of the face; confusion of the memory; loss of speech; cold sweats; shooting out of the body in length; turning up of the whites of the eyes: an alteration of the whole countenance; or a pinching in of the nose; hollowness of the eyes; sinking of the cheeks; contraction and rolling of the tongue; coldness in the extreme parts; sometimes a discharge of blood, &c. shrieking, gasping, and

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fetching the breath thick; falling of the lower jaw, and the like.

Upon death their follows a deprivation of all sense and motion, as well of the heart and arteries as of the nerves and limbs; an inability of the body to sustain itself erect; a stiffness and coldness of the parts; a loss of colour, and some time after, putrefaction and stench.

Eels, serpents, and insects, continue to move in all their parts, a long time after being cut asunder. Birds, likewise, flutter, for a while after their heads are struck off; and the hearts of animals will long continue to beat, after being separated from their bodies. I remember myself to have seen a man quartered and disbowelled, for treason; when his heart being thrown into the fire, it sprung upwards; first to the height of about a foot and a half, and then by degrees a less height, for the space, as I judge, of two or three minutes. There goes an ancient, and no improbable tradition of an ox, that lowed when his entrails were taken out. Yet this appears less certain than what is related of a traitor, who was heard to pronounce three or four words of a prayer, after his heart was separated from the body, and remained in the hand of the executioner. We judge this relation more credible than the former of the ox's lowing under the hands of the sacrificer; because the friends of

the persons publicly executed, usually fee the executioner, to perform his office with the utmost expedition, and not keep the malefactor long under torture: whereas there appears no reason why the like dispatch should be made in the case of sacrifices.

The following things are in use for recovering persons from apoplexies and faintings; many of whom, without relief, might die in the fit; viz. the exhibiting of spirituous cordial-waters; bending the body forwards; stopping and strongly compressing the mouth and nostrils; bending the fingers, backward, so as to give pain; twitching off some hairs of the head or beard; rubbing the parts, especially the face and extremities, briskly; the quick sprinkling of cold water upon the face; sudden and shrill noises; the applying of rose-water and vinegar to the nose, in case of fainting; and burning feathers or woollen cloth under it, in hysteric fits: but principally, the application of a heated salamander, shovel, or warming-pan bottom, near the head, is serviceable in fits of the apoplexy.

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There are many examples of men left for dead, laid out, and even buried, who have yet come to life again. This has been discovered, in such as were buried, upon opening the ground soon after, and finding bruises and wounds on the head; from the struggling of the body in the

coffin. We had a late and very memorable example of this, in the person of that subtle schoolman, Johannes Scotus; who being buried in the absence of his servant, that seemed to have known him subject to such kind of trances; this servant, some time after, opened the grave, and found the body bruised and wounded. The like happened in our time, in the person of a player buried at Cambridge. And a certain gentleman once told me, that having a desire to know what hanging was; he, by way of curiosity, and without any ill design upon himself, resolved to make some trial of it; and to this purpose suspending a cord, and fastening it about his neck, he mounted a stool, and swung himself off; conceiving it in his power to recover the stool again, when he pleased: but he failed in his expectation; and was relieved by the assistance of a friend then present. Being asked, what he underwent in that condition? he answered, he felt no pain; but first perceived a kind of fire, and burning before his eyes; then an extreme blackness, or darkness; and lastly, a kind of pale, blue, or sea-green colour; which is also frequently perceived by persons in fainting fits. And a physician assured me, that by the use of frictions, and hot bathing, he had brought a man to life again, who hanged himself, and had continued hanging for half an hour. This physi