Sudden and violent death, shocking to the senses, may not be,
probably is not, painful to the victim. Drowning, hanging,
freezing, shooting, falling from a height, poisoning of
many kinds, beget stupor or numbness of the nerves which is
incompatible with sensation. Persons who have met with such
accidents, and survived them, testify to this. Records to this
effect are numberless. Death from fire dismays us; we can
scarcely conceive aught more distressing. In all likelihood,
however, it appears far worse than it is. Fire probably causes
suffocation from smoke, or insensibility from inhaling flame, so
that the agony we imagine is not felt. They who have been near
their end have experienced more pain on returning, so to speak,
from their grave, than if they had gone to it. They have endured
all the pangs, corporeal and mental, of death, without actually
dying. It is an error, therefore, to suppose that men may not
have tasted the bitterness of death, and yet be alive and in
good health.--JUNIUS HENRY BROWNE, _The Forum_.
(696)
=Death Valley Conquered=--See CONQUEST, SEVERE.