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VERONIQUE LE GUEN, the 33-year-old French woman who in 1988 set a world
record for time spent alone in an underground cavern, committed suicide
in Paris last week by taking an overdose of barbiturates. Her husband Francis
Le Guen said that since the experiment, ‘she had had an emptiness inside
her which she was unable to communicate’.

Le Guen spent 111 days with electrodes wired to her body, in a cold,
damp cavern 80 metres below ground at Valat-Negre in southern France. Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs
carried out electrocardiograms and brain tests and took samples of blood
and urine. The 15,000 tests are still being analysed.

Deprived of a clock, natural light and information on current issues,
Le Guen drank around 1000 litres of water and kept a detailed diary. She
described herself at one point as being ‘psychologically completely out
of phase, where I no longer know what my values are or what is my purpose
in life’. Speleologist Michel Siffre who directed the experiment with a
team from Nice, Strasbourg and Lyons, has put Le Guen’s suicide down to
‘purely private reasons’. But this view is refuted by Le Guen’s husband.