happen in succession in cesspools, and similar cases, for want of this precaution.
It is hardly needful to say, do not try to breathe the air of the place where help is required. Yet many persons fall in consequence of forgetting this precaution. If the temptation to breathe be at all given way to, the necessity increases, and the helper himself is greatly endangered. Resist the tendency, and retreat in time.
Be careful to commence giving aid with the lungs full of air, not empty. It may seem folly to urge this precaution, but I have found so many persons who, on trying the experiment on which the whole is based, have concluded the preparation by closing the mouth and nostrils after an expiration, that I am sure the precaution requires to be borne in mind.
I have thought it quite needless to refer to the manner in which the preparation enables a person to increase so considerably the time during which he may suspend the operation of breathing. It consists, of course, chiefly in laying up for the time, in the cells of the lungs, a store of that vital principle which is so essential to life. Those who are not aware of the state of the air in the lungs during ordinary respiration, and its great difference from that of the atmosphere, may obtain a clearer notion from the following experiment. Fill a pint or quart jar with water over the pneumatic trough, and with a piece of tube and a forced expiration throw the air from the lungs in their ordinary state into the jar; it will be found that a lighted taper put into that air will be immediately extinguished.
A very curious fact connected with the time of holding the breath was observed by Mr. Brunel, jun., and has, I think, never been published. After the river had broken into the tunnel at Rotherhithe, Mr. Brunel descended with a companion (Mr. Gravatt, I think,) in a diving-bell, to examine the place: at the depth of about 30 feet of water, the bell touched the bottom of the river, and was over the hole; covering it, but too large to pass into it. Mr. Brunel, after attaching a rope to himself, inspired deeply, and sunk, or was lowered through the water, in the hole, that he might feel the frames with his feet, and gain further knowledge, if possible, of the nature of the leak. He remained so long beneath without giving any signal, that his companion, alarmed, drew him up before he
