SUSPENDED ANIMATION.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 29, 22 September 1911, Page 18

SUSPENDED ANIMATION.

CLAIMS OF A GENEVA SCIENTIST. Professor Raoul Pictet, of Geneva, who is visiting' Paris, has, in an interview, made some remarkable statements a.s to the possibility of suspending life. He declares that he has been able to preserve frozen fish for three months, when, t-he-y seemed to have all life in them extinct, and 3 r et, when reduced to their normal temperature, after such a long lapse of time, life returned to them. ■ and they moved about as freely as before. His method was very simple. After keeping some- tench and other freshwater fish in water at a temperature of 32deg. Fahr. for one night, he gradually diminished the temperature until rfc was 4deg. All tho water in the basin in which the fish were kept was thus frozen, and tho fish, of course, were also frozen into the block, of ice. When some of them were- taken out of the block they broke up into bits likepieces of ice. At the end of . three ■months- he allowed tlie ice to melt, and the fish .that remained swam, about, and gave all the usual signs of being as much alive as ever. /JClie vital principle, as long as no essential organ was deteriorated, had simply, been suspended. " ■