The _British and Colonial Druggist_ discust the death of a
young woman at Hackney under circumstances in which a certain
insect powder largely figured. As the powder appeared by Dr.
Tidy’s experiment to be perfectly harmless, the suggestion
was not unnaturally made that the deceased, who was possibly
of a hysterical, highly imaginative turn of mind, took the
powder in the full belief that by its means her death might
be accomplished. The writer of the article, we think wrongly,
brings forward two remarkable instances of what may be regarded
as practical jokes with melancholy terminations. In the case of
the convict delivered up to the scientist for the purpose of a
psychological experiment (the man was strapped to a table and
blindfolded, ostensibly to be bled to death; a siphon containing
water was placed near his head and the fluid was allowed to
trickle audibly into a vessel below it, at the same time that a
trifling scratch with a needle was inflicted on the culprit’s
neck; it is said that death occurred at the end of six minutes),
fear must have played no inconsiderable share in the fatal
result, and we do not know whether all the vital organs were in
a sound condition, tho they were presumably so. The old story of
the case of a college porter is also one in point. The students
entrapt him into a room at night, a mock inquiry was held, and
the punishment of death by decapitation decreed for his want
of consideration to the students. It is small wonder that,
under the dominion of fear and belief in the earnestness of his
tormentors, the sight of an ax and a block, with subsequent
blindfolding and necessary genuflexion, a smart rap with a wet
towel on the back of his neck should have been followed by the
picking up of a corpse.--_Lancet._
(1519)
* * * * *
A Sioux Indian, who had lost a relative by death, vowed to
kill the first living thing he met. This was once not an
uncommon practise among our Indians. Issuing from his lodge,
he chanced to meet a missionary--a man much beloved by all,
from whom this Indian had received many favors. Unwilling, but
bound by his vow, he shot his benefactor as he passed. Indian
usage did not sanction a bloody retribution on the murderer,
since the obligation of his vow was recognized by all. The
shaman, however, upbraided him for his act, and pronounced his
doom, saying: “You will die within the year.” The Indian, tho
apparently a well man at the time, was seized by a wasting
disease, and actually did die within the specified time,
a victim to his own superstitious imagination.--H. W.
HENSHAW, _The Youth’s Companion_.
(1520)