SENSATIONS OF HANGING AND DROWNING.

Hot Lakes Chronicle, Issue 117, 27 February 1895, Page 2

SENSATIONS OF HANGING AND DROWNING.

In an article on '-'- The Days of the Dandies," in Blackwood's Magazine, some curious examples are given by Hie writer of a well-known phenomenon —tlie fact that the tvcnts of a whole lifetime will sometimes pass in a moment through the mind of a person who is on the point of death by drowning or suffocation. Speaking of the case of Lord Ponsonby, who wns hanged by the mob in Pari.? in 1791. and cut down before life was extinct, the author says : He (Lord Ponsonby) proceeded to give an account of his sensations on returning to consciousness. Ho could not have been actually suspended in inid-air more than a "few seconds, and yet in that brief space of time all the events of his past life passed through iiis mind. It is true that lii.-j life to that date had not been a very eventful ono being only 19 years of age ; but every sensation was renewed to all its freshness. It is also remarkable at the time that he did not at the time experience any -ensation of fear ; while he added he was an essentially nervous temperament. This remarkable mental power of calling up the past in moments of suspended animation I hnve heard frequently mentioned. One was the case of Count Zichy, in the revolution of 1818, in Vienna. He was caught by the savage mob, hung like Lord Ponsonby in the middle of the s'reet, when his own regb meat of dragoons charged down and cut the cords as he was swinging in the air. Ho fell to the ground, and was supposed to be dead: but his recovery was a very different matter from Lord Ponsouyb's, for he suffered agonies, and for ten days had four men constantly with him. Hedescribed exactly the same sensations as Lord Ponsonby ; the scroll of what was n much longer life was unrolled, even the smallest detail rushed back on his memory; ho had the same fearlessness at the moment, but he felt all the horrors of the agony when the danger was past. A most interesting little book, called "Admiral Beaufort's Experiences of Drowning," hears testimony to this seemingly universal experience injsudden danger. 'Thought succeeded thought,' says the admiral with the rapidity that is not only indesciibable, but probably inconceivable by anyone who lias not himself been in a similar condition —the event that had just taken place, the effect it would have on my family, and a thousand circumstances associated with homo, travelling backward in time in retrogade succession." All this proves that duration of life does not depend on hours, but on the number ot impressions conveyed to tho brain.