I say a colonel just as I would say a king; all men are equal when submitted to analysis.
"Professor Meiser was satisfied, as are all physiologists, that to break a colonel's head, or to make a hole in his heart, or to cut his spinal column in two, is to kill the little animal; because the brain, the heart, the spinal marrow are the indispensable springs, without which the machine cannot go.

But he thought too, that in removing sixty quarts of water from a living person, one merely puts the little animal to sleep without killing him--that a colonel carefully dried up, can remain preserved a hundred years, and then return to life whenever any one will replace in him the drop of oil, or rather the sixty quarts of water, without which the human machine cannot begin moving again.
"This opinion, which may appear inadmissible to you and to me too, but which is not absolutely rejected by our friend Doctor Martout, rests upon a series of reliable observations which the merest tyro can verify to-day.

There _are_ animals which can be resuscitated: nothing is more certain or better proven.

Herr Meiser, like the Abbe Spallanzani and many others, collected from the gutter of his roof some little dried worms which were brittle as glass, and restored life to them by soaking them in water.

The capacity of thus returning to life, is not the privilege of a single species: its existence has been satisfactorily established in numerous and various animals.