Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-03-10
Sensations of Falling.
ICor. London Rield,1

A few months ago 1 was engaged in
some Investigations concerning the
modes of training employed by profession
al acrobats and gymnasts in educating
children TO take part in their perforn-
ances, with view TO calculating certain
point of considerable medical interest Tin
no way connected with the present ques-
tion), and learned incidentally that, since
the precaution of q net has been insisted
upon for the prevention of accidents in
lofty tumbHng, many gymnasts now make
terrible descent or serial dive
special feature of their entertainment.
Drops of sixty, eighty, or one hundred feet
sheer, or even more, are not uncommon.
A momber of the Hanlon-Volta troupe has
dived from height of no less than 120
feet above the net, where circumstances
have permitted of it, and declares that not
only is he free from all inconvenience in
the descent, which is made headforemost,
but that he would be willing to fall from
much greater elevation, due extension of
the capacity, elasticity, ETC., of the net be-
ing provided. The extraordinary "spilr'
made by one of the Hanlon-Lees, formerly
belonging to the above troupe, in the third
act of "Le Voyage en- SUISSE" will be re-
it is remarkable further for the arrest than
the duration of motion. On being assured
by the proprietor of some newly invented
mechanism, applied to a novel feat of erial
gymnastics which he had taken up to the
roof of building to inspect, that there
was no danger, made experiment of a de-
scent of about fifty feet. Sixty feet was the
extent of the fall claimed by the gymnast
himself, but I imagined that this would
include the elevation of the highest point
of tho arc obtained by the oscillation of
his trapeze, as we'll as the depression
caused by his weight upon the net, and
therefore calculates it to have been about
ten or twelve feet less from the situation of
my body as hung at arms length from
the motionless bar with my legs drawn up
in sitting posture, to the point where /
impinged fat on my back upon the cush-
ions. was conscious of no physical en-
barrassment while coming down, though I
must confess that my mind was too much
occupied with the possibilities contingent
on arrival to admit of any accurate analy-
sis of my respiratory sensation in transit.
The idea that the act OF falling "stops the
breath" so that the person who falls ia dead
cefore he reaches the ground, is a very
| common one, and it would be interesting
to know the testimony, if any exists, on
which it is based. Nobody complains of
suffocating in a violent agitation of the cir,
such as that produced by hurricane trav-
cling at q rate of one hundred miles an
hour. Of course, asphyxiation means
more than an impeachment to breathing,
and q man falling from a great height
might attain speed exceeding one hun
dred miles per hour: but / am not &C
quainted with the records of any post NOR
lem examinations which bear out the as
phyxia theory. No matter what other les
ions are found, the indications of this are
patent enough. Even more conclusive to
my mind than the cases advanced in dis
proof by your contemporary are those in
Vulnerable of people who have fallen from
lofty places, and, though sustaining fatal
injury, have not expired Immediately. Nor
must it be forgotten that nervous shock
alone may have sutficed to kill where no
physical LESSONS of such gravity as TO ac-
count for death can be detected.