Premature burial and how it may be prevented : with special reference to trance, catalepsy, and other forms of suspended animation / by William Tebb and Edward Perry Vollum.

  • William Tebb
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Premature burial and how it may be prevented : with special reference to trance, catalepsy, and other forms of suspended animation / by William Tebb and Edward Perry Vollum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    CHAPTER III. ANIMAL AND SO-CALLED HUMAN HIBERNATION. The following case of the jerboa, or jumping mouse, recorded last century by Major-General Thomas Davies, F.R.S., in the Transactions of the Linnaean Society,^ will show how far a torpid mammal may be removed from the opportunity of breathing, and how imper- ceptibly, to the eyes of an observer, its torpid life passed into actual death :— With respect to the figure given of it in its dormant state (plate viii., fig. 6), I have to observe that the specimen was found by some workmen in digging the foundation for a summer house in a gentleman's garden, about two miles from Quebec, in the latter end of May, 1787. It was discovered enclosed in a ball of clay, about the size of a cricket ball, nearly an inch in thick- ness, perfectly smooth within, and about twenty inches under ground. The man who first discovered it, not knowing what it was, struck the ball with his spade, by which means it was broken to pieces, or the ball also would have been presented to me. The drawing will perfectly show how the animal is laid during its dor- mant state [a tawny mouse, with long hind legs and long tail, coiled up into a perfect ovoid, of which the two poles are the crown of the head and the rump.] How ^''Linnaean Transactions, 1797, vol. iv., p. 155. An Account of the Jumping Mouse of Canada—Dipus Canadensis.''''