Respiration is certainly more necessary to life than food is; but it is
not absolutely indispensable, as we have seen in the cases of apparent
death cited in our previous article. It is possible, through exercise,
for a person to accustom himself, up to a certain point, to abstinence
from air as he can from food. Those who dive for pearls, corals, or
sponges succeed in remaining from two to three minutes under water. Miss
Lurline, who exhibited in Paris in 1882, remained two and a half minutes
beneath the water of her aquarium without breathing. In his treatise De
la Nature, Henri de Rochas, physician to Louis XIII., gives six minutes
as the maximum length of time that can elapse between successive
inspirations of air. It is probable that this figure was based upon an
observation of hibernating animals.
In his Encyclopedic Dictionary, Dr. Dechambre relates the history of
a Hindoo who hid himself in the waters of the Ganges where women were
bathing, seized one of them by the legs, drowned her, and then removed
her jewels. Her disappearance was attributed to crocodiles. One woman
who succeeded in escaping him denounced the assassin, who was seized and
hanged in 1817.
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