Half asleep and half awake, I dreamed a great deal last night. I must tell you what I dreamed about, and how, so that you may judge whether they are dreams or daydreams; whether they are to be mulled over, or forgotten.

I reflected on life and on death, but more on the latter than on the former. I was investigating what, properly speaking, constitutes death; whether it is anything else but the cessation of life; whether it is the last of the evils that the body has to suffer; the causes that occur to bring it about; the formal causes that finally determine it; the different formal causes of natural death in old age, of anticipated death by internal illnesses, of sudden death by external violence; the causes responsible for the onset and consequences of any kind of death whatever.

From time to time, I passed from these gloomy ideas to more comforting ones: methods (as effective as they were unusual) for driving away impending death in many cases, and for restoring life when it had been extinguished.

But will it not appear to you that I am still dreaming, when I make a distinction between death and the extinction of life? And will you not regard as so many new dreams everything I will be able to tell you about the diseases of corpses, about the good condition or the alteration of a dead body’s organic parts?

Life essentially consists in the spontaneous movement of the heart, which is the first thing in us to become alive and the last to die, and which imparts vital movement to all the rest of the body. The movement of the heart seems to depend on the nerves with which it is equipped; this movement is exerted upon the blood, which the heart takes in on one side and pours out again on the other. The heart has two chambers that the blood must pass through in succession, but the blood cannot pass from one chamber to the other without traversing the lungs, and it cannot traverse the lungs unless their vesicles are alternately distended and collapsed by an elastic air that goes in and out again by turns. That is the essence of what are properly called the vital functions. If any one of these functions happens to cease for any reason whatever, life ceases immediately.

Now these functions can cease for various reasons, the main ones being three: either because the organs that perform the functions are destroyed, or the fluids dissipated; or else because these solids or fluids are corrupted in whole or in part; or else, lastly, because these solids or fluids, although healthy and whole, encounter insuperable obstacles that prevent them from acting as they should.

In this last case, that is, when the solid parts as well as the fluid ones are healthy and whole, but an insurmountable obstacle makes all their vital movement cease, then life ceases, and we could say that it is extinguished. But could we also say that the body is already dead, if there is still some possibility of removing the fatal obstacle, and giving a new impetus to organs that are quite ready to resume their function, and seem to be waiting for nothing else? Is not the situation of a man reduced to this state like that of a candle just blown out, whose wick is still red and smoking, only needing a breath of air in order to be rekindled?

Today the opinion is spreading that many drowned persons are in precisely this state, and consequently several large cities have already taken very wise measures to prevent these people ultimately from dying, and in various places several of them have successfully been brought back to life.

Is it not high time to think about whether it would be possible to bring equally effective help to persons struck by lightning? I believe so; we must try to bring the idea closer to reality. To achieve this aim, it seems to me that it would be necessary to conduct precise investigations into the formal cause of death of people struck by lightning, a cause that is perhaps not always the same. Given the importance of the subject matter, I hope that you will permit me to indulge in all the digressions that could tend to shed some light on it.

I saw someone who had just cut his own throat, and I said at once that he would die of it, if he did not receive help, but that it was an easy matter to save him, even supposing that there was a very large opening in his windpipe, to which he had applied three different instruments in succession in order to enlarge the incision. My judgment was based on the one hand on the fact that an opening in the trachea, larger than the opening of the glottis, renders impossible the breathing that is necessary for the maintenance of life. On the other hand, since such a wound heals easily and is very amenable to stitching, the air’s natural passageway can be reduced by this means to its correct proportions, so that the air may go in and out of the chest, and respiration, etc., may consequently be restored. That is in fact what happened.

I have seen some people crucified; I have heard onlookers cry that it was a miracle because a prompt death did not follow, and I dared assert, before people whose imaginations were highly fired up over this, that I saw no cause of death in the operation— which amounted to piercing the hands and feet through and through, and piercing one side of the stomach rather superficially— because no part of that process is capable of preventing the continuation of the vital functions.

It is entirely different with people who are hanged; indeed, it seems that three formal causes of death can be found combined in this one operation alone, and that it is sometimes one cause, sometimes another, that decides the fate of such and such a subject.

The most obvious cause of the extinction of life in the case of people who are hanged is the suffocation that results from the compression of the trachea, which the cord squeezes so tightly that the air cannot pass through. However, it is quite possible for the body’s organic parts not to be destroyed by this, and for the body’s fluids to be still less altered; so it happens that several hanged people have been restored to life. A second cause, perhaps more fatal, takes place primarily in subjects who are very full-blooded; it is congestion, or the rupture of the interior vessels in the head, seeing that the veins that should bring the blood back from the head are more exposed to the tightening of the cord than are the arteries that carry the blood to the head and that are located in a far deeper part of the body. A third and final cause, even more rapid and fatal than strangling, is the compression of the nerves of the spinal marrow due to dislocation of the neck vertebrae; this can be considered the master stroke of the most skillful executioners, and is followed by the quickest death.

As for people killed by lightning, it does not appear possible to me to make a general pronouncement on the immediate cause of their death, whether it is suffocation, burning, laceration of the filaments, paralysis of the nerves, corruption of the fluids, etc.; but I think that a series of good observations and well-directed experiments could settle the question beyond a doubt in a relatively short period of time, given that the composition of lightning and of electricity has (thanks to you) been perfectly demonstrated.

From time to time one has occasion to charge one or more Leyden jars with the sky’s fire; one is always in a position to charge as many of them as one desires with electric fire. It is not only possible to discharge these bottles all at once onto whatever animal one wishes, but it is possible even to discharge them onto a certain part of the animal, and in whatever direction one wishes; onto the head, the spinal column, the lungs, the heart, etc., or onto several of these parts at once, from which it may be presumed that different kinds of death would ensue, more or less rapidly, and that in several of these cases there would be an interval of varying length between the extinction of life and the destruction of the organs, which finalizes death.

From this information we could obtain a nearly certain indication of the most appropriate ways to bring these animals back to life in each set of circumstances. We would then at last have an excellent reason to use these same methods subsequently, with some hope of success, on persons so unfortunate as to be struck by lightning.

Monsieur Tasker regaled you with a little whirlwind in Maryland 18 years ago. How enchanted I would be if I could regale you this year with some little resurrection of a creature struck by lightning, even it were only a chicken or a turkey!

Nonetheless, I will confess that I would be more enchanted still if I could make all the people who are strongly affected by fear of thunder believe that even if they did have the rather uncommon misfortune of being struck by lightning, there would not yet be reason to despair entirely of their fate.

I will add in conclusion that if, as has often been proposed, we were permitted to conduct important medical experiments from time to time on criminals, in reparation for the evils that they have done to humanity, this would be the least cruel of all the experiments that could possibly be attempted on this principle, since there is no kind of death more gentle than this one, as you did well to remark, and since we would only condemn them to death with a certain degree of hope that we could soon bring them back to life. I have the honor to be, etc.