Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin ; with 29 illustrations from drawings by the author.
- George Catlin
- Date:
- 1890
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin ; with 29 illustrations from drawings by the author. 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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![malady in question; and his sensation of hinder- ance is caused by the hinderance to free respira- tion. His dreamy recollections of the seemingly beginning of a new and strange existence, appear to him to have passed over a long time, though the spasm lasted but a minute, or a minute and a half (as long as a man can live without breathing), and in most cases to have lasted a few minutes longer, death would have been the consequence. How awful to be so near to death, and so often! He wates suddenly, and convulsed, as if shaken; he feels as if snatched from the jaws of a monster that was devouring him — and what has saved his life? ]^othing but the instant rallying — the death-struggle of his abused and sleeping lungs raising him upon his heels and elbows, when he wakes with the tocsin ringing in his ears, Dy- ing mortal! moisten your lips and your throat, and shut your mouth, or death is at the door! How many will recognize this picture, and yet how few will properly appreciate the danger they have passed! It is a well-known fact that persons in the habit of sleeping with their mouths open are subject to continual and frequent attacks of the nightmare; and if each of these attacks is the hegmning of death, certainly their repetition must be tending to an ending in death.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21045495_0116.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
