The breathing becomes slow and feeble, and is often interrupted
by deep sighs. As Gratiolet remarks, whenever our attention is long
concentrated on any subject, we forget to breathe, and then relieve
ourselves by a deep inspiration; but the sighs of a sorrowful person,
owing to his slow respiration and languid circulation,
are eminently characteristic.[1] As the grief of a person
in this state occasionally recurs and increases into a paroxysm,
spasms affect the respiratory muscles, and he feels as if something,
the so-called _globus hystericus_, was rising in his throat.
These spasmodic movements are clearly allied to the sobbing
of children, and are remnants of those severer spasms which occur
when a person is said to choke from excessive grief.[2]
[1] The above descriptive remarks are taken in part from my own observations,
but chiefly from Gratiolet (`De la Physionomie,' pp. 53, 337; on Sighing,
232), who has well treated this whole subject. See, also, Huschke. `Mimices
et Physiognomices, Fragmentum Physiologicitim,' 1821, p. 21. On the dulness
of the eyes, Dr. Piderit, `Mimik und Physiognomik,' 1867, s. 65.
[2] On the action of grief on the organs of respiration,
_Obliquity of the eyebrows_.
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