Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented
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Title: Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented
Author: William Tebb
Edward Perry Vollum
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREMATURE BURIAL AND HOW IT MAY BE PREVENTED ***
PREMATURE BURIAL,
AND
HOW IT MAY BE PREVENTED.
PREMATURE BURIAL
AND
HOW IT MAY BE PREVENTED
_WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO TRANCE, CATALEPSY, AND
OTHER FORMS OF SUSPENDED ANIMATION_
BY
WILLIAM TEBB, F.R.G.S.
_Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of Medical Sciences, Palermo;
Author of “The Recrudescence of Leprosy and its Causation”_
AND
COL. EDWARD PERRY VOLLUM, M.D.
_Late Medical Inspector, U.S. Army; Corresponding Member of the
New York Academy of Sciences_
[Illustration: LOGO]
LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIM.
1896
“What if in the tomb I awake!”--_Romeo and Juliet._
“How comes it about that patients, given over as dead by their
physicians, sometimes recover, and that some have even returned to life
in the very time of their funerals?”--CELSUS.
“Such is the condition of humanity, and so uncertain is men’s judgment,
that they cannot determine even death itself.”--PLINY.
PREFACE.
A DISTRESSING experience in the writer’s family many years ago brought
home to his mind the danger of premature burial, and led ultimately
to the careful study of a gruesome subject to which he has a strong
natural repugnance. His collaborator in the volume has himself passed
through a state of profound suspended animation from drowning, having
been laid out for dead--an experience which has induced him in like
manner to investigate the various death-counterfeits. The results of
the independent inquiries carried on by both of us in various parts
of Europe and America, and by one of us during a sojourn in India in
the early part of this year, are now laid before the reader, with such
practical suggestions as it is hoped may prepare the way for bringing
about certain needed reforms in our burial customs.
The danger, as I have attempted to show, is very real--to ourselves,
to those most dear to us, and to the community in general; and it
should be a subject of very anxious concern how this danger may
be minimised or altogether prevented. The duty of taking the most
effective precautions to this end is one that naturally falls to the
Legislature, especially under a Government professing to regard social
questions as of paramount importance. Fortunately, this is a non-party
and a non-contentious question, it imperils no interest, so that no
formal obstruction or unnecessary delay need be apprehended; and it
should be urged upon the Government to introduce and carry an effective
measure at the earliest opportunity, not only as a security against the
possibility of so terrible an evil, but to quiet the widespread and not
altogether unreasonable apprehension on this subject which is now so
prevalent.
It has been found convenient to retain throughout the body of the work
the use of the singular pronoun, but every part of the book receives
the cordial approval of both authors, and with this explanation we
accept its responsibility jointly.
We have to acknowledge our great indebtedness in preparing this volume
to many previous writers, including such as have investigated the
phenomena of suspended animation and the signs of death, and such
as, with a more practical intention, have dwelt upon the danger of
death-counterfeits being mistaken for the absolute extinction of life,
illustrating their counsels or warnings by numerous instances. Grouping
both classes of writers together, we may mention specially the names of
Winslow and Bruhier, Hufeland, Struve, Marcus Herz and Köppen, Kite,
Curry, and Anthony Fothergill; and, of more recent date, the names
of Bouchut, Londe, Lénormand, and Gaubert (on mortuaries), Russell
Fletcher, Franz Hartmann, and Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson.
A work to which we are particularly indebted for the literature of
the subject is that of the late Dr. Félix Gannal, “Mort Apparente
et Mort Réelle: moyens de les distinguer.” Paris, 1890. Dr. Gannal,
having qualified in medicine and pharmacy, occupied himself with the
business of embalming, which he inherited from his father. He employed
the considerable leisure which the practice of that art left to him in
compiling the above laborious work. He examined many books, pamphlets,
theses, and articles, from which he cited expressions of opinion on
the several points--in a lengthy form in his original edition (1868),
in a condensed form in the second edition. His Bibliography is by
far the most comprehensive that has been hitherto compiled. Our own
Bibliography had been put together from various sources before we made
use of Dr. Gannal’s. It includes several titles which he does not give;
while, on the other hand, it has been considerably extended beyond its
original limits by transcribing titles which we have found nowhere but
in his list. The Bibliography, it need hardly be said, is much more
extensive than our own reading; but it seemed useful to make it as
complete as possible, whether the books had been seen by us or not, so
as to show in chronological order how much interest had been aroused in
the subject from time to time--in one country more than another, or in
various countries together. The titles of articles in journals, which
belong for the most part to the more recent period, have been taken
from the Index Catalogue of the Surgeon-General’s Library, Washington,
a few references being added to articles which have otherwise come
under our notice.
W. T.
_CONTENTS._
PAGE
_Preface_ _1_
_Introduction_ _9_
_CHAPTER I._
_Trance_ _21_
_CHAPTER II._
_Catalepsy_ _32_
_CHAPTER III._
_Animal and So-called Human Hibernation_ _40_
_CHAPTER IV._
_Premature Burial_ _51_
_CHAPTER V._
_Narrow Escapes from Premature Burial_ _64_
_CHAPTER VI._
_Formalities and their Fatal Consequences_ _105_
_CHAPTER VII._
_Probable Cases of Premature Burial_ _113_
_CHAPTER VIII._
_Predisposing Causes and Conditions of Death-Counterfeits_ _120_
_CHAPTER IX._
_Premature Burial and Cremation in India. The Towers of
Silence_ _129_
_CHAPTER X._
_The Danger of Hasty Burials_ _144_
_CHAPTER XI._
_The Fear of Premature Burial_ _153_
_CHAPTER XII._
_Sudden Death_ _159_
_CHAPTER XIII._
_The Signs of Death_ _180_
_CHAPTER XIV._
_The Duration of Death-Counterfeits_ _208_
_CHAPTER XV._
_The Treatment of the Dead_ _215_
_CHAPTER XVI._
_Number of Cases of Premature Burial_ _220_
_CHAPTER XVII._
_Embalming and Dissections_ _229_
_CHAPTER XVIII._
_Death-Certification_ _238_
_CHAPTER XIX._
_Suggestions for Prevention_ _257_
_CHAPTER XX._
_Cremation as a Preventive of Premature Burial_ _275_
_CHAPTER XXI._
_Waiting Mortuaries_ _285_
_CHAPTER XXII._
_Conclusion_ _316_
_APPENDIX A._
_Historical Cases of Restoration from Apparent Death_ _325_
_APPENDIX B._
_Resuscitation of Still-Born and other Infants_ _341_
_APPENDIX C._
_Recovery of the Drowned_ _347_
_APPENDIX D._
_Miscellaneous Addenda_ _350_
_APPENDIX E._
_The Jewish Practice of Early Burial_ _353_
_APPENDIX F._
_Summary of Ordinances, etc., Relating to the Inspection of
Corpses and of Interments_ _360_
_Bibliography_ _363_
_Index_ _389_
INTRODUCTION.
A CONCURRENCE of peculiar circumstances, beginning in May, 1895, has
directed public attention in England to the subject of premature
burial, probably to a greater degree, so far as the author’s
recollection serves, than at any time during the past half-century.
Amongst these may be mentioned the publication of several recent cases
of premature burial in the English and American papers; the narrow
escape of a child found in Regent’s Park, London, laid out for dead at
the Marylebone Mortuary, and afterwards restored to life; the issue
in Boston, U.S., of Dr. Franz Hartmann’s instructive essay, entitled,
“Buried Alive: an Examination into the Occult Causes of Apparent Death,
Trance, and Catalepsy” (a considerable number of copies having been
sold in England), and the able leading articles and correspondence on
the subject in the _Spectator_, _Daily Chronicle_, _Morning Post_,
_Leeds Mercury_, _The Jewish World_, _Plymouth Mercury_, _Manchester
Courier_, _To-Day_, and many other daily and weekly journals.
It is curious, that while many books and pamphlets relating to
this important subject have been issued in France and Germany, no
adequate and comprehensive treatise has appeared from the English
press for more than sixty years past, nor writings in any form, with
the exception of a paper by Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson in No. 21
of the _Asclepiad_, published in 1889, on the “Absolute Signs of
Death,” sundry articles in the medical journals from time to time,
and a London edition of Dr. Hartmann’s volume in January, 1896. The
section upon “Real and Apparent Death” in the 1868 edition of the
late Professor Guy’s _Forensic Medicine_ begins with the words, “This
subject has never attracted much attention in England, and no medical
author of repute has treated it at any length”--a remark not less true
after the lapse of a generation. The following chapters have been
prepared with the view, not so much of supplying this omission, as of
guiding the public to the dangers of our present mode of treating the
apparent dead, in the hope that reforms and preventive measures may be
instituted without delay in order to put an end to such unnecessary
domestic tragedies.
In introducing the subject the author is aware that the great majority
of the medical profession in this country are either sceptical or
apathetic as to the alleged danger of living burial. Many do not
believe in the existence of death-trance or death-counterfeits, and the
majority of those who do believe in them declare that cases are very
rare, and that if consciousness is ever restored in the grave it can
only last a second or two, and that those who live in fear of such an
occurrence should provide for a _post-mortem_ or for the severance of
the jugular vein. Many persons, on the other hand, after much careful
inquiry, are of opinion that cases of premature burial are of frequent
occurrence; and that the great majority of the human race (outside of
a few places in Germany, where waiting mortuaries are established, or
where the police regulations, such as those described in this volume as
existing in Würtemburg, are efficiently and systematically carried out)
are liable to this catastrophe. Important as the subject is allowed to
be, and numerous as are the reported cases, no effective steps, either
public or private, appear to have been taken, outside of Germany and
Austria, to remedy the evil. At present a majority of the people appear
content to trust to the judgment of their relations and to the ordinary
certificates of death to safeguard them from so terrible a disaster.
That death-certificates and death-verifications are often of a most
perfunctory description, both as to the fact of death and the cause
of death, has been proved by overwhelming evidence before the recent
House of Commons Committee on Death-Certification. Such certificates,
when obtained, may be misleading and untrustworthy; while in many
cases burials take place without the doctor having either attended
the patient or examined the body. Nor, in spite of the appointment
of death-verificators by our neighbours across the Channel, is this
important precaution effectively carried out by them. M. Devergie
reports that in twenty-five thousand communes in France no verification
of death takes place, although the law requires it; and he demands
that no diploma shall be given without the candidate having proved
himself conversant with the signs of death. (_Medical Times_, London,
1874, vol. i., p. 25.) On personal inquiry from medical authorities in
France, during the present year (1896), we learn that this laxity still
prevails.
It appears strange that, except when a man dies, all his concerns are
protected by custom and formalities, or guarded by laws, so as to
insure his interests being fairly carried out to completion. Thus we
see that heirship, marriage, business affairs of all kinds, whether of
a public or private nature, are amply guarded by such precautionary
and authoritative measures as will secure them. But one of the most
important of all human interests--that which relates to the termination
of life--is managed in such a careless and perfunctory way as to permit
of irreparable mistakes. To be sure there are laws in most of the
Continental States of Europe that are intended to regulate the care and
burial of the dead, but few of them make it certain that the apparently
dead shall not be mistaken for the really dead, and treated as such.
None of them allow more than seventy-two hours before burial (some
allow only thirty-six, others twenty-four, and others again much less,
according to the nature of the disease), unless the attending physician
petitions the authorities for reasonable delay--a rare occurrence.
And even if postponement is granted, it is doubtful if the inevitable
administrative formalities would leave opportunities for dubious cases
to receive timely and necessary attention, or for cases of trance,
catalepsy, coma, or the like, to be rescued from a living burial.
In the introduction to a Treatise entitled “The Uncertainty of the
Signs of Death, and the Danger of Precipitate Interments,” published in
1746, the author, Mr. M. Cooper, surgeon, says:--“Though death at some
time or other is the necessary and unavoidable portion of human nature,
yet it is not always certain that persons taken for dead are really and
irretrievably deprived of life, since it is evident from experience
that many apparently dead have afterwards proved themselves alive by
rising from their shrouds, their coffins, and even from their graves.
It is equally certain that some persons, too soon interred after their
supposed decease, have in their graves fallen victims to a death which
might otherwise have been prevented, but which they then find more
cruel than that procured by the rope or the rack.” The author quotes
Lancisi, first physician to Pope Clement XI., who, in his Treatise _De
subitaneis mortibus_, observes:--“Histories and relations are not the
only proofs which convince me that many persons supposed to be dead
have shown themselves alive, even when they were ready to be buried,
since I am induced to such a belief from what I myself have seen; for
I saw a person of distinction, now alive, recover sensation and motion
when the priest was performing the funeral service over him in church.”
After reporting and describing a large number of cases of premature
burial, or of narrow escapes from such terrible occurrences, in which
the victims of hasty diagnosis were prepared for burial, or revived
during the progress of the burial service, Mr. Cooper continues:--“Now,
if a multiplicity of instances evince that many have the good fortune
to escape being interred alive, it is justly to be suspected that
a far greater number have fallen victims to a fatal confinement in
their graves. But because human nature is such a slave to prejudice,
and so tied down by the fetters of custom, it is highly difficult, if
not absolutely impossible, to put people on their guard against such
terrible accidents, or to persuade those vested with authority to take
proper measures for preventing them.”
Nothing seems to have been done to remedy this serious evil; and
forty-two years later Mr. Chas. Kite, a well-known practitioner, called
attention to the subject in a volume, entitled “The Recovery of the
Apparently Dead,” London, 1788. This author, on p. 92, says:--“Many,
various, and even opposite appearances have been supposed to indicate
the total extinction of life. Formerly, a stoppage of the pulse and
respiration were thought to be unequivocal signs of death; particular
attention in examining the state of the heart and larger arteries, the
flame of a taper, a lock of wool, or a mirror applied to the mouth or
nostrils, were conceived sufficient to ascertain these points; _and
great has been the number of those who have fallen untimely victims
to this erroneous opinion_. Some have formed their prognostic from
the livid, black, and cadaverous countenance; others from the heavy,
dull, fixed, or flaccid state of the eyes; from the dilated pupil;
the foaming at the mouth and nostrils, the rigid and inflexible state
of the body, jaws, or extremities; the intense and universal cold,
etc. Some, conceiving any one of these symptoms as incompetent and
inadequate to the purpose, have required the presence of such of them
as were, in their opinion, the least liable to error; but whoever will
take the trouble of reading the Reports of the (Humane) Society with
attention, will meet with very many instances where all the appearances
separately, and even where several associated in the same case,
occurred, and yet the patient recovered; and it is therefore evident
that these signs will not afford certain and unexceptionable criteria
by which we may distinguish between life and death.”
Mr. Kite furnishes references to numerous cases of recovery where the
apparently dead exhibited black, livid, or cadaverous countenances;
eyes fixed or obscure; eyeballs diminished in size, immovable and
fixed in their sockets, the cornea without lustre; eyes shrivelled;
froth at the mouth; rigidity of the body, jaws, and extremities;
partial or universal cold.[1]
The crux of the whole question is the uncertainty of the signs which
announce the cessation of physical existence. Prizes have been offered,
and prizes have been awarded, but further experience has shown that the
signs and tests, sometimes singly and sometimes in combination, have
been untrustworthy, and that the only certain and unfailing sign of
death is decomposition.
Commenting upon actual cases of premature burial, the _Lancet_, March
17, 1866, p. 295, says:--“Truly there is something about the very
notion of such a fate calculated to make one shudder, and to send a
cold stream down one’s spine. By such a catastrophe is not meant the
sudden avalanche of earth, bricks, or stones upon the luckless miner or
excavator, or the crushing, suffocative death from tumbling ruins. No;
it is the cool, determined treatment of a living being as if he were
dead--the rolling him in his winding sheet, the screwing him down in
his coffin, the weeping at his funeral, and the final lowering of him
into the narrow grave, and piling upon his dark and box-like dungeon
loads of his mother earth. The last footfall departs from the solitary
church-yard, leaving the entranced sleeper behind in his hideous shell
soon to awaken to consciousness and to a benumbed half-suffocated
existence for a few minutes; or else, more horrible still, there he
lies beneath the ground conscious of what has been and still is,
until, by some fearful agonised struggle of the inner man at the weird
phantasmagoria which has passed across his mental vision, he awakes to
a bodily vivification as desperate in its torment for a brief period as
has been that of his physical activity. But it is soon past. There is
scarcely room to turn over in the wooden chamber; and what can avail a
few shrieks and struggles of a half-stifled, cramped-up man!”
To prevent such unspeakable horrors as are here pictured, the Egyptians
kept the bodies of the dead under careful supervision by the priests
until satisfied that life was extinct, previous to embalming them
by means of antiseptics, balsams, and odoriferous gums. The Greeks
were aware of the dangers of premature burial, and cut off fingers
before cremation to see whether life was extinct. In ancient Rome the
recurrence of cases of premature burial had impressed the nation with
the necessity for exercising the greatest caution in the treatment of
the supposed dead; hasty conclusions were looked upon as criminal, the
absence of breath or heat or a cadaverous appearance were regarded
as uncertain tests, and the supposed dead were put into warm baths
or washed with hot water, and other means of restoration adopted.
Neither in the greater part of Europe nor in the United States are
any such means resorted to now, except in the case of apparent death
by drowning, by asphyxia, or by hanging. Premature burials and narrow
escapes are of almost every-day occurrence, as the narratives in the
newspapers testify; and the complaint made by a surgeon, Mr. Cooper,
a hundred and fifty years ago, that the evil is perpetuated because
we are slaves to prejudice, and because those vested with authority
refuse to take measures for prevention, remains a serious blot upon our
advanced civilisation. The _Spectator_, September 14, 1895, commenting
upon this unsatisfactory state of affairs, observes:--“Burning,
drowning, even the most hideous mutilation under a railway train, is
as nothing compared with burial alive. Strangely enough this universal
horror seems to have produced no desire to guard against burial alive.
We all fear it, and yet practically no one takes any trouble to avoid
the risk of it happening in his own case, or in that of the rest of
mankind. It would be the simplest thing in the world to take away all
chance of burying alive; and yet the world remains indifferent, and
enjoys its horror undisturbed by the hope of remedy.”
The authors’ own reasonings, opinions, and conclusions are here
briefly presented; but as the majority of the public are more or less
influenced by authority, it has been thought advisable to furnish a
series of authenticated facts under the several headings to which they
belong, and to cite the judgments of eminent members of the medical
profession who have given special attention to the subject. The source
of difficulty has been an _embarras de richesse_, or how from a mass
of material, the extent of which will be seen by reference to the
Bibliography, to select typical cases without needless repetition.
The premature burials and narrow escapes from such disasters, which
are reported by distinguished physicians and reputable writers, may
be numbered literally by hundreds, and for every one reported it is
obvious from the nature of the case that many are never heard of.
Amongst the names of notable persons who have thought the subject
sufficiently practical for their attention may be mentioned those of
Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Pliny, Celsus, Plutarch, and St.
Augustine in antiquity; of Fabricius, Lancisi, Winslow, Haller, Buffon,
Lavater, Moses Mendelssohn, Hufeland, and Alexander von Humboldt in
modern times.
The subject has several times engaged the attention of the French
Senate and Legislative Chamber, as well as the Legislative Assemblies
in the various States of Germany. In 1871, Dr. Alex. Wilder, Prof. of
Physiology and Psychological Science, read a paper before the members
of both houses of the New York State Legislature at the Capitol,
Albany; but we are not aware that the subject has ever been introduced
in any of the other State Legislatures, or in the British Parliament,
or in any of the Colonial Assemblies.
In an editorial note, as far back as November 27, 1858, the _Lancet_,
referring to a case of death-trance, remarked that such “examples are
sufficiently mysterious in their character to call for a more careful
investigation than it has hitherto been possible to accord to them.”
The facts disclosed in this treatise, the authors hope, may encourage
qualified scientific observers to study the subject of death-trance,
which, it must be admitted, has been strangely overlooked in England,
though it would not be easy to mention one which more deeply concerns
every individual born into the world.
In order to prevent unnecessary pain to the reader on a subject so
distressing in its nature, the more sensational and horrifying cases
of premature burial have been omitted. They can, however, be found
in abundance in the writings of Bruhier, Köppen, Kempner, Lénormand,
Bouchut, Russell Fletcher, and the Boston (U.S.) edition of Hartmann.
In England and in America it is the fashion amongst medical men to
maintain that the tests known to medical art are fully equal to the
prevention of live burial, that the cases quoted by the newspapers
are introduced for sensational purposes, and that most of them are
apocryphal. The perusal of the cases recorded in this volume, and a
careful consideration of the weight of cumulative evidence represented
by the very full bibliography, must satisfy the majority of reflective
readers that the facts are both authentic and numerous.
PREMATURE BURIAL,
AND
HOW IT MAY BE PREVENTED.
_SOME FORMS OF SUSPENDED ANIMATION._
CHAPTER I.
TRANCE.
OF all the various forms of suspended animation and apparent death,
trance and catalepsy are the least understood, and most likely to lead
the subject of them to a premature burial; the laws which control
them have perplexed pathologists in all ages, and appear to be as
insoluble as those which govern life itself. Dr. Le Clerc, in his
“History of Medicine,” records that “Heraclides, of Pontus, wrote a
book _concerning the causes of diseases_, and another _concerning
the disease in which the patient is without respiration_, in which
he affirmed that in this disorder the patient sometimes continued
thirty days without respiration, in such wise that he appeared dead,
notwithstanding that there was no corruption of the body.”[2]
Dr. Herbert Mayo, in “Letters on Truths Contained in Popular
Superstitions,” p. 34, says that “death-trance is the suspension
of the action of the heart, and of breathing, and of voluntary
motion--generally little sense of feeling and intelligence. With these
phenomena is joined loss of external warmth, so that the usual evidence
of life is gone. But there has occurred every shade of this condition
that can be imagined, between occasional slight manifestations of
suspension of one or other of the vital actions and their entire
disparition.”
Macnish, who also asserts that the function of the heart must go on,
and even of the respiration, however slightly, says--“No affection
to which the animal frame is subject is more remarkable than this
(catalepsy, or trance).... There is such an apparent extinction of
every faculty essential to life, that it is inconceivable how existence
should go on during the continuance of the fit.”--_Philos. of Sleep,
Glasgow, 1834, pp. 225-6._
In Quain’s “Dictionary of Medicine,” ii., p. 1063, Dr. Gowers
says:--“The state now designated hypnotism is really induced trance,
and trance has been accurately termed ‘spontaneous hypnotism’....
“The mental functions seem, in most cases, to be in complete abeyance.
No manifestations of consciousness can be observed, or elicited by the
most powerful cutaneous stimulation, and on recovery no recollection of
the state is preserved. But in some cases volition only is lost, and
the patient is aware of all that passes, although unable to give the
slightest evidence of consciousness....
“In the cases in which the depression of the vital functions reaches
an extreme degree, the patient appears dead to casual and sometimes to
careful observation. This condition has been termed ‘death-trance,’
and has furnished the theme for many sensational stories, but
the most ghastly incidents of fiction have been paralleled by
well-authenticated facts. [The last clause appears in the new edition
as follows:--“Persons have certainly been buried in this state, and
during the recent epidemic of influenza an Italian narrowly escaped
interment during the consequent trance.”]
“The duration of trance has varied from a few hours or days to several
weeks, months, or even a year.
“Occasionally it is attended by some vaso-motor disturbance. In a
well-authenticated case of death-trance the intense mental excitement
produced by the preparations for fastening the coffin lid occasioned a
sweat to break out over the body.”
[CASE OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI.]
Many notable men have at one time or another been subject to this
disorder. Speaking of Benjamin Disraeli, Mr. J. Fitzgerald Molloy, in
his “Life of the Gorgeous Lady Blessington,” vol. ii., pp. 37, 38, says
that in his “youth he was seized with fits of giddiness, during which
the world swung round him, he became abstracted, and once fell into a
trance from which he did not recover for a week.”
LETHARGIC STUPOR, OR TRANCE.
The _Lancet_ of December 22, 1883, pp. 1078-80, contains particulars
from the pen of W. T. Gairdner, M.D., LL.D., etc., Professor of
Medicine in the University of Glasgow, of a remarkable case of trance,
extending continuously over more than twenty-three weeks, which
attracted a considerable amount of notoriety at the time and led to
an extensive discussion. In his comments upon the case, the author
continues, in the issue of January 5, 1884, pp. 5, 6:--
“The case recorded in the _Lancet_ of December 22, 1883, p. 1078, has
been left up to this point without remarks, other than those obviously
suggested by the direct observation of the facts in comparison or
contrast with those of other cases coming more or less under the
designation above mentioned. But in perusing, even in the most cursory
manner, the multitudinous literature pertaining to the subjects of
‘trance,’ ‘ecstasy,’ ‘catalepsy,’ etc., not to speak of the popular
narratives which from a very remote antiquity have handed down the
tradition of preternatural sleep as an element in the fairy tales
of almost all languages, one is struck by the almost uncontrollable
disposition to regard such cases as altogether outside the limits of
true physiological science: as being, according to the expressive
Scotch phrase, ‘no canny’--or, in other words, miraculous--and as
involving questions connected with the unseen world, ‘the undiscovered
country from whose bourn no traveller returns.’ So much is this the
case, that, if in this nineteenth century the questions which presented
themselves to Hippocrates in the treatise, _περὶ ἱερῆς νούσου_
(‘Concerning the Sacred Disease’), had to be rediscussed, it would
certainly be in regard to some of the disorders mentioned above, and
not as to epilepsy in its well-recognised clinical types, that the
theory of a supernatural origin of the phenomena, whether favourably
entertained or not, would fall to be argued. The irreconcilable
differences of opinion in the Belgium Academy, as regards the quite
modern instance of Louise Lateau, are sufficient to show that all the
culture and the scientific instincts of the present age have not quite
inaugurated the ‘reign of law,’ nor established finally the position
that ‘miracles do not happen.’ On the other hand, the researches of
M. Charcot and others seem to be ever extending the domain of science
further into the region of the marvellous and the obscure, so that
even the most pronounced cases of ‘demoniac possession’ of the olden
time have become the commonplaces of hystero-epilepsy in the clinique
of the Salpétrière. The peculiar interest of the present case is that
it is altogether devoid of any of these adventitious, and more or less
romantic, incidents. The patient is the mother of a family, and has
lived a strictly domestic and (up to a short time before her seizure)
healthy and regular life. There are no peculiar moral and religious
problems to perplex the situation. There is no history of inveterate
hysteria, or of long continued rapt contemplation; nor has there been
the slightest evidence of any craving after notoriety, either before
the attack or since its termination. The moral atmosphere, in short,
surrounding the phenomena is altogether unfavourable to exaggeration
and imposture, for which, indeed, no reasonable motive can be assigned.
Nevertheless, under these very commonplace conditions, concurring
with some degree of melancholy or mental despondency after delivery,
but during a convalescence otherwise normal, Mrs. M’I---- presents
to our notice a condition of suspended consciousness and disordered
innervation in no degree less extreme than the ‘trances’ or cataleptic
attacks which have been recorded as the result of the most aggravated
hysteria, or as the miracles of religious ecstasy and profound mental
emotion. She becomes for the long period of over a hundred and sixty
days continuously an almost mindless automaton, connected with the
external world only through a few insignificant reflexes and through
the organic functions. She is absolutely passive as regards everything
that demands spontaneous movement, and betrays almost no sign of
sensation, general or special, when subjected to the severest tests
that can be applied short of physical injury.”
[CASE REPORTED BY PROF. W. T. GAIRDNER.]
In further notes upon the case, in the _Lancet_ of January 12, 1884, p.
58, Professor Gairdner says:--
“The only other case to which I desire to make allusion at present
is one in which I am, fortunately, in a position to furnish a
sequel to an incomplete narrative, not without resemblance to the
one lately published in this journal. ‘A Case of Trance’ was the
subject of a paragraph in the _British Medical Journal_ of May 31,
1879, p. 827, from which it appeared that in the London Hospital a
woman, twenty-seven years of age, was at the time under the care
of Dr. Langdon Down, being of rather small stature and weak mental
capacity, and affected for at least two years with organic disease of
the heart. About three weeks before the date of the report she had
become suddenly somnolent, with most of the peculiarities in her sleep
which have been already alluded to. She was fed partly by nutrient
enemata, and for some days by a tube passed through the nostrils into
the stomach. The resemblance is noted between this case and that of
‘the famous Welsh fasting girl,’ then attracting much attention in
newspapers and otherwise. There being no further reference to this
case in the journal, I wrote to Dr. Langdon Down, who kindly furnished
me with the following additional particulars, which will, no doubt,
be read even now with interest:--‘My patient, who was in a state of
trance, recovered somewhat suddenly after about four weeks, and left
the hospital. The first indication of returning consciousness was
observed when I was reading to my class at her bedside one of the
numerous letters that I had received entreating me not to have her
buried until something which the writers recommended had been done.
The paragraph of the medical journal got into some Welsh paper, and
then went the round of the provincial press, hence the number of
letters I received. This special one was from an old gentleman of
eighty-four years, who, when he was twenty-four, was thought to be
dead, and whose friends had assembled to follow him to the grave, when
he heard the undertaker say, “Would anyone like to see the corpse
before I screw him down?” The undertaker at the same time moved the
head a little and struck it against the coffin, on which he aroused
and sat up. On reading this aloud a visible smile passed over the face
of my patient, and she returned to obvious consciousness soon after.
She has not come under observation since she left the hospital.’
“Although this case is probably only one among many, I mention it here
because the receipt of the letter just given led me to investigate more
particularly the state of the hearing in Mrs. M’I.’s case, and also to
try the experiment of reading aloud Dr. Down’s letter in her presence
and that of the class. I had often remarked to bystanders that,
although the subjects of these apparently unconscious states appeared
inaccessible to the ordinary tests of sensibility, it was on record
as regards some, even of those regarded as cases of ‘apparent death,’
that after recovery they affirm to have heard everything that passed,
although unable to lift hand or foot to save themselves from premature
burial. Neither the reading of the letter nor a violent shout into her
ear produced any visible effects.”
[DEATH’S COUNTERFEIT.]
Thomas More Madden, M.D., F.R.C.S. (Edin.), in an article on “Death’s
Counterfeit,” in the _Medical Press and Circular_, vol. i., April 27,
1887, pp. 386-8, relates the following case “of so-called hysteric
trance”:--
“A young lady, Miss R----, apparently in perfect health, went to her
room after luncheon to make some change in her dress. A few minutes
afterwards she was found lying on her bed in a profound sleep, from
which she could not be awakened. When I first saw her, twenty-four
hours later, she was sleeping tranquilly; the decubitus being dorsal,
respiration scarcely perceptible, pulse seventy, and extremely small;
her face was pallid, lips motionless, and the extremities very cold.
At this moment, so death-like was her aspect, that a casual observer
might have doubted the possibility of the vital spark still lingering
in that apparently inanimate frame, on which no external stimulus
seemed to produce any sensorial impression, with the exception
that the pupils were normal and responded to light. Sinapisms were
applied over the heart and to the legs, where they were left on until
vesication was occasioned without causing any evidence of pain.
Faradisation was also resorted to without effect. In this state she
remained from the evening of December 31 until the afternoon of
January 3, when the pulse became completely imperceptible; the surface
of the body was icy cold, the respiratory movements apparently ceased,
and her condition was to all outward appearance undistinguishable
from death. Under the influence of repeated hypodermic injections of
sulphuric ether and other remedies, however, she rallied somewhat,
and her pulse and temperature improved. But she still slept on until
the morning of the 9th, when she suddenly woke up, and, to the great
astonishment of those about her, called for her clothes, which had
been removed from their ordinary place, and wanted to come down to
breakfast, without the least consciousness of what had occurred. Her
recovery, I may add, was rapid and complete.
“The next case of lethargy that came under my notice was that of a
boy, who, after an attack of fever, fell into a state of complete
lethargic coma, in which he lay insensible between life and death for
forty-seven days, and ultimately recovered perfectly.
“In a third instance of the same kind, in a lady under my care, the
patient, after a lethargic sleep of twenty-seven days, recovered
consciousness for a few hours, and then relapsed into her former
comatose condition, in which she died.
“The fourth case of lethargy which I have seen was, like the first,
a case of trance, which lasted for seventy hours, during which the
flickering vital spark was only preserved from extinction by the
involuntary action of the spinal and nervous centres. In this instance
the patient finally recovered.
“The fifth and last instance of profound lethargy that has come within
my own observation occurred last autumn in the Mater Misericordiæ
Hospital in a young woman.... In that instance, despite all that
medical skill could suggest or unremitting attention could do, it was
found impossible to arouse the patient from the apparently hysterical
lethargic sleep in which she ultimately sank and died.”
I have referred to the foregoing cases, occurring in one physician’s
experience, as disproving the general opinion that lethargy or trance
is so rarely met with as to be of little medical importance. For my own
part, I have no doubt that these conditions are of far more frequent
occurrence than is generally supposed. Moreover, I have had reason to
know that death is occasionally so exactly thus counterfeited that
there is good cause for fearing the probability of living interment in
some cases of hasty burial.
[DR. MORE MADDEN’S OPINION.]
Referring to death-trance, Dr. Madden observes, _ib._, p.
388--“Death-trance, or that profound degree of lethargy which closely
counterfeits death, deserves greater attention than is generally paid
to it as a pathological condition, as well as a possible cause of
premature interment. For, unless we reject every statement, however
well authenticated, of those who have witnessed such cases, merely
because their experience does not tally with our preconceived opinions
and wishes, neither the frequent occurrence of death-trance nor the
fearful results of its non-recognition can be questioned.”
Mr. John Chippendale, F.R.C.S., writing to the _Lancet_, 1889, vol. i.,
p. 1173, on “Catalepsy.--Post-mortem Sweating,” says:--
“I may mention that there is a record of a man who during an illness
was seized with trance, though, as he lay in what Claudio calls ‘cold
abstraction,’ he was aware of all that was passing. At last, as he was
about to be covered in his coffin, his mental condition was such that
he broke into a profuse sweat, which was fortunately perceived, and he
recovered and was able to recount his experiences.”
It would appear from the following telegram through Reuter’s Agency
that trance is occasionally epidemic:--
[From _Daily Telegraph_, March 17, 1890.]
“A NEW DISEASE.
“Vienna, March 15, 1890.
“Several cases of a new disease, which originally appeared in
Mantua immediately after the subsidence of the recent influenza
epidemic, and to which the people of that city gave the name of ‘La
nonna’--_Anglice_, ‘Falling asleep’--have occurred in the Comitat of
Pressburg.
“Persons suffering from this complaint fall into a death-like trance,
lasting about four days, out of which the patient wakes in a state of
intense exhaustion. Recovery is very slow, but, so far, no fatal case
has been reported.”
A correspondent writing to the _English Mechanic_ September 13, 1895,
says:--“I know one lady who has been three times prepared for burial,
and very narrowly escaped it on the first occasion.” The author
wrote to the writer for further details, and received a reply, dated
September 19, 1895, from which it appears that the lady had married
into a political family of considerable note, who would not care to
have her identity disclosed. My correspondent says:--“ I know that she
lay several days in a state not to be distinguished from death; that
she was in her coffin, and, I believe, showed signs of life just as the
coffin was about to be closed. On two subsequent occasions she passed
into similar trances; but though believed to be dead, and treated as
such, the previous experience prevented any idea of burial being
entertained” until clear evidence of dissolution should appear.
The _New York Weekly Witness_ of January 15, 1896, reports
[A SEVEN YEARS’ TRANCE.]
“A LONG CATALEPTIC SLEEP.
“Information was received at Milford, Pa., last Friday, that William
Depue, a prominent citizen of Bushkill, Pike County, whose mind for
seven years has been a blank, had suddenly returned to consciousness.
“Seven years ago, while at work, Mr. Depue became ill. Doctors were
summoned, but they could find no possible ailment. The sick man sank
into a cataleptic sleep, from which medical science could not arouse
him.
“At no time during the long period did he recognise any one, and food
was given him through a tube inserted in his mouth. He lost no flesh,
and was apparently as healthy as any man. Although the best medical
men in the country were called to his bedside, his case baffled them
all.
“Upon recovering his senses he set about his usual labours as if he
had been asleep but the ordinary time. He remembers nothing that has
taken place during his seven years’ trance.”
The following case appeared in the _Middlesbrough Daily Gazette_,
February 9, 1896, and in a number of English papers:--
“The young Dutch maiden, Maria Cvetskens, who now lies asleep at
Stevensworth, has beaten the record in the annals of somnolence. At
the beginning of last month she had been asleep for nearly three
hundred days. The doctors, who visit her in great numbers, are agreed
that there is no deception in the case. Her parents are of excellent
repute, and it has never occurred to them to make any financial profit
out of the abnormal state of their daughter. As to the cause of the
prolonged sleep, the doctors differ.”
CHAPTER II.
CATALEPSY.
CATALEPSY differs in some of its characteristics from trance, but the
one is often mistaken for the other. It is not so much a disease as a
symptom of certain nervous disorders, and to which women and children
are more particularly liable. Catalepsy can be produced artificially by
hypnotisation. Like trance, it has often been mistaken for death, and
its subjects buried alive.
Dr. Franz Hartmann differentiates the two disorders as follows:--“There
seems hardly any limit to the time during which a person may remain
in a trance; but catalepsy is due to some obstruction in the organic
mechanism of the body, on account of its exhausted nervous power.
In the last case the activity of life begins again as soon as the
impediment is removed, or the nervous energy has recuperated its
strength.”
Dr. Gowers, in Quain’s “Dictionary of Medicine,” ed. 1894, vol. i.,
pp. 284-5, describes catalepsy as belonging to both sexes, at all ages
from six to sixty. It is a nervous affection, commonly associated
with distinct evidence of hysteria, but said sometimes to occur as
an early symptom of epilepsy. It is attended commonly with loss of
consciousness. The limbs remain in the position they occupied at the
onset, as if petrified. The whole or part of the muscles pass into
a state of rigidity. In profound conditions sensibility is lost to
touch, pain, and electricity; and no reflex movements can be induced
even by touching the conjunctiva, a state of mental trance being
associated.
[NATURE OF CATALEPSY.]
_Cassell’s Family Physician_ (by Physicians and Surgeons of the
principal London Hospitals) describes this singular affection, as
follows:--“Catalepsy is one of the strangest diseases possible. It
is of rare occurrence, and some very sceptical people have even
gone so far as to deny its existence. That is all nonsense, for
catalepsy is just as much a reality as gout or bronchitis. A fit of
catalepsy--for it is a paroxysmal disease--consists essentially in
the sudden suspension of thought, feeling, and the power of moving.
The patient remains in any position in which she--we say she, for it
occurs mostly in women--happens to be at the moment of the seizure, and
will, moreover, retain any posture in which she may be placed during
the continuance of the fit. For example, you may stretch out the arms
to their full length, and there they remain stretched out without
showing the slightest tendency to drop. It does not matter how absurd
or inconvenient or apparently fatiguing the position may be, it is
maintained until altered by some one or until the fit is over. In these
attacks there are no convulsions, but, on the contrary, the patient
remains perfectly immobile. She is just like a waxen figure, or an
inanimate statue, or a frozen corpse.
“Cataleptic fits vary very much, not only in their frequency, but in
their duration. Sometimes they are very short indeed, lasting only a
few minutes. In one case, that of a lady, they would sometimes come on
when she was reading aloud. She would stop suddenly in the middle of a
sentence, and a peculiar stiffness of the whole body would seize her,
fixing the limbs immovably for several minutes. Then it would pass off,
and the reading would be continued at the very word at which it had
been interrupted, the patient being quite unconscious that anything had
happened. But sometimes fits such as these may last for days and days
together, and it seems not improbable that people may have been buried
in this state in mistake for death.”
The following case, contributed by Dr. Gooch, will further illustrate
this malady:--
“A lady, who laboured habitually under melancholy, a few days after
parturition was seized with catalepsy, and presented the following
appearances:--She was lying in bed motionless and apparently
senseless. It was thought the pupils of her eyes were dilated, and
some apprehensions were entertained of effusion on the brain; but
on examining them closely it was found they readily contracted when
the light fell upon them. The only signs of life were warmth, and a
pulse which was one hundred and twenty, and weak. In attempting to
rouse her from this senseless state, the trunk of the body was lifted
up and placed so far back as to form an obtuse angle with the lower
extremities, and in this posture, with nothing to support her, she
continued sitting for many minutes. One arm was now raised, and then
the other, and in the posture they were placed they remained. It was
a curious sight to see her sitting up staring lifelessly, her arms
outstretched, yet without any visible signs of animation. She was
very thin and pallid, and looked like a corpse that had been propped
up and stiffened in that attitude. She was now taken out of bed and
placed upright, and attempts were made to rouse her by calling loudly
in her ears, but in vain; she stood up, indeed, but as inanimate as a
statue. The slightest push put her off her balance, and she made no
exertion to retain it, and would have fallen had she not been caught.
She went into this state three times; the first lasted fourteen
hours, the second twelve hours, and the third nine hours, with waking
intervals of three days after the first fit, and of one day after
the second; after this time the disease assumed the ordinary form of
melancholia.--_The Science and Practice of Medicine, by Sir W. Aitken,
p. 357._
[CASES BY DRS. JEBB AND KING CHAMBERS.]
Dr. John Jebb, F.R.S., cited in Reynolds’ “System of Medicine,” vol.
ii., pp. 99-102, has recorded the following graphic case:--
“In the latter end of last year (_viz._, 1781), I was desired to
visit a young lady who, for nine months, had been afflicted with that
singular disorder termed a catalepsy. Although she was prepared for
my visit, she was seized with the disorder as soon as my arrival was
announced. She was employed in netting, and was passing the needle
through the mesh, in which position she immediately became rigid,
exhibiting, in a very pleasing form, a figure of death-like sleep,
beyond the power of art to imitate or the imagination to conceive. Her
forehead was serene, her features perfectly composed. The paleness
of her colour, her breathing at a distance being also scarcely
perceptible, operated in rendering the similitude to marble more exact
and striking. The positions of her fingers, hands, and arms were
altered with difficulty, but they preserved every form of flexure they
acquired: nor were the muscles of the neck exempted from this law, her
head maintaining every situation in which the hand could place it as
firmly as her limbs,” etc.
Dr. King Chambers, after citing the above case in full, continues:--
“The most common exciting cause of catalepsy seems to be strong mental
emotion. When Covent Garden Theatre was last burnt down, the blaze
flashed in at the uncurtained windows of St. Mary’s Hospital. One of
my patients, a girl of twenty, recovering from low fever, was woke up
by it, and exclaimed that the day of judgment was come. She remained
in an excited state all night, and the next morning grew gradually
stiff, like a corpse, whispering (before she became quite insensible)
that she was dead. If her arm was raised, it remained extended in
the position in which it was placed for several minutes, and then
slowly subsided. The inelastic kind of way in which it retained its
position for a time, and then gradually yielded to the force of
gravity, reminded one more of a wax figure than of the marble to
which Dr. Jebb compares it. A strange effect was produced by opening
the eyelid of one eye; the other eye remained closed, and the raised
lid after a time fell very slowly like the arm. A better superficial
representation of death it is difficult to conceive.... In both these
cases I convinced myself carefully that there was no deception.
“Other cases are of much longer duration.... The death-like state
may last for days. It may be mistaken for real death, and treated as
such....
“Any cases of apparent death that did occur (in former days) were
burnt, or buried, or otherwise put out of the way, and were never more
heard of. But after the establishment of Christianity, tenderness,
sometimes excessive, for the remains of departed friends took the
place of the hard, heathen selfishness. The dead were kept closer to
the congregations of the living, as if to represent in material form
the dogma of the Communion of Saints. This led to the discovery that
some persons, indeed some persons of note (amongst others, Duns Scotus
the theologian, at Cologne), had got out of their coffins, and died in
a vain attempt to open the doors of their vaults.”
[CASES FROM THE MEDICAL JOURNALS.]
The author relates several other remarkable cases. Here is one:--
“I lighted accidently on another case, communicated to the same
scientific body (Acad. Royale des Sciences), by M. Imbert in 1713.
It is that of the driver of the Rouen diligence, aged forty-five,
who fell into a kind of soporific catalepsy on hearing of the sudden
death of a man he had quarrelled with. It appears that ‘M. Burette,
under whose care he was at La Charité, made use of the most powerful
assistances of art--bleeding in the arms, the foot, the neck, emetics,
purgatives, blisters, leeches,’ etc. At last somebody ‘threw him
naked into cold water to surprise him.’ The effect surprised the
doctors as much as the patient. It is related with evident wonder how
that ‘he opened his eyes, looked steadfastly, but did not speak.’ His
wife seems to have been a prudent woman, for a week afterwards she
‘carried him home, where he is at present: they gave him no medicine;
he speaks sensibly enough, and mends every day.’”
The _Lancet_, 1870, vol. i., p. 1044, in its Paris correspondence
says:--
“The following curious case is related as having occurred at Dunkirk,
on April 14, and as ‘showing the utility of catalepsy.’ A young girl
of seventeen years was seized with a violent attack of epilepsy, and
fell, on the above date, into a canal. A boatman immediately jumped
into the water to save her, and brought her to the shore after twenty
minutes. The most singular circumstance connected with the accident is
that, when the young girl was taken out of the water, she presented
all the symptoms of catalepsy. Notwithstanding this long immersion,
she was resuscitated, and nothing afterwards transpired to cause any
anxiety.”
Mr. James Braid, M.R.C.S., in the _Medical Times_, 1850, vol. xxi.,
p. 402, narrates a case of a cataleptic woman in the Manchester Royal
Infirmary under the care of Dr. John Mitchell, and writes:--
“Every variety of contrivance and torture was resorted to by various
parties who saw her, for the purpose of testing the degree of her
insensibility, and for determining whether she might not be an
impostor, but without eliciting the slightest indication of activity
of any of the senses; ... nevertheless she _heard and understood all
that was said and proposed to be done, and suffered the most exquisite
torture from various tests applied to her_!! A fact so important as
this ought to be published in every journal throughout the civilised
world; so that in future professional men might be thereby led to
exercise greater discretion and mercy in their modes of applying tests
to such patients.”
The _Somerset County Herald_ (Taunton) of October 12 1895, has the
following:--
“EXTRAORDINARY CASE OF TRANCE NEAR WEYMOUTH.
“The wedding nuptials of a sailor from H.M.S. _Alexandra_ and a young
woman residing at Broadwey, who were recently married, have been
interrupted in a most unusual manner by the newly-made bride falling
into a trance. On the day following the wedding Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer,
for such is the name of the newly-espoused pair, went for a drive, and
on returning in the evening the bride, remarking that she did not feel
very well, went upstairs, and before long was in a sound sleep, which
continued throughout the night and far into the following day. The
relatives of the bride, remembering symptoms which she had previously
developed, then sent for Dr. Pridham, who at once pronounced that
the unfortunate young woman had fallen into a trance. Dr. Colmer, of
Weymouth, was likewise called; but nothing that these two medical
gentlemen could do had the slightest effect in arousing their patient
from the state of lethargy into which she had so suddenly and
unexpectedly relapsed. In this condition she remained for a space of
five days, when she gradually showed signs of returning animation,
and in the course of a few hours regained consciousness, though she
was then in a very exhausted condition. After her awakening the young
woman developed inflammation of the legs, which was regarded as a
very serious condition for her to be in. In an interview on Saturday,
Dr. Pridham described the trance as being exceedingly death-like in
character, and added that, in such trances as the one in question, in
the past people have no doubt been actually buried.”
A report of this case appears in the _St. James’s Gazette_.
A less experienced practitioner would probably have made out a death
certificate, as in numerous similar cases.
After burial we hear no more of them; they may have been buried in
a death-like trance, but the medical certificate, no matter how
inconsiderately given, consigns them to perpetual silence beyond appeal
or escape. Family remonstrance is then unavailing, for, except in cases
of strong suspicion of poisoning, no Home Secretary or Coroner would
grant an order for exhumation.
[APATHY OF THE PUBLIC.]
The existence of trance, catalepsy, and other death counterfeits,
followed by hasty burial, has been alluded to by reputable writers from
time immemorial; and while the veracity of these writers has remained
unchallenged, and their narratives are confirmed by hundreds of cases
of modern experience, the effect on the public mind has been only of a
transitory character, and nothing has been done either in England or
America to safeguard the people from such dreadful mistakes.
CHAPTER III.
ANIMAL AND SO-CALLED HUMAN HIBERNATION.
THE following case of the jerboa, or jumping mouse, recorded last
century by Major-General Thomas Davies, F.R.S., in the “Transactions
of the Linnæan Society,”[3] will show how far a torpid mammal may be
removed from the opportunity of breathing, and how imperceptibly, to
the eyes of an observer, its torpid life passed into actual death:--
“With respect to the figure given of it in its dormant state (plate
viii., fig. 6), I have to observe that the specimen was found by some
workmen in digging the foundation for a summer house in a gentleman’s
garden, about two miles from Quebec, in the latter end of May, 1787.
It was discovered enclosed in a ball of clay, about the size of a
cricket ball, nearly an inch in thickness, perfectly smooth within, and
about twenty inches under ground. The man who first discovered it, not
knowing what it was, struck the ball with his spade, by which means it
was broken to pieces, or the ball also would have been presented to
me. The drawing will perfectly show how the animal is laid during its
dormant state [a tawny mouse, with long hind legs and long tail, coiled
up into a perfect ovoid, of which the two poles are the crown of the
head and the rump.] How long it had been under ground it is impossible
to say; but as I never could observe these animals in any parts of
the country after the beginning of September, I conceive that they
lay themselves up some time in that month, or beginning of October,
when the frost becomes sharp; nor did I ever see them again before the
last week of May, or beginning of June. From their being enveloped in
balls of clay, without any appearance of food, I conceive they sleep
during the winter, and remain for that time without sustenance. As
soon as I conveyed this specimen to my house, I deposited it, as it
was, in a small chip box, in some cotton, waiting with great anxiety
for its waking; but that not taking place at the season they generally
appear, I kept it until I found it began to smell: I then stuffed it,
and preserved it in its torpid position. I am led to believe its not
recovering from that state arose from the heat of my room during the
time it was in the box, a fire having been constantly burning in the
stove, and which in all probability was too great for respiration....”
[INSTANCES OF ANIMAL HIBERNATION.]
Mr. Braid, after citing facts as to higher animals, proceeds:--“There
are other creatures which have not the power of migrating from climes
too intensely hot for the normal exercise of their physical functions,
and the lives of these animals are preserved through a state of torpor
superinduced by the want of sufficient moisture, their bodies being
dried up from excessive heat. This is the case with snails, which are
said to have been revived by a little cold water being thrown on them,
after having remained in a dry and torpid state for fifteen years. The
_vibrio tritici_ has also been restored, after perfect torpidity and
apparent death for five years and eight months, by merely soaking it
in water. Some small, microscopic animals have been apparently killed
and revived again a dozen times by drying and then applying moisture to
them. This is remarkably verified in the case of the wheel-animalcule.
And Spallanzani states that some animalcules have been recovered by
moisture after a torpor of twenty-seven years. According to Humboldt,
again, some large animals are thrown into a similar state from want
of moisture. Such he states to be the case with the alligator and
boa-constrictor during the dry season in the plains of Venezuela, and
with other animals elsewhere.”--_On Trance and Human Hibernation, p.
47._
Dr. Moore Russell Fletcher, in his treatise on “Suspended Animation,”
pp. 7, 8, observes:--“Snakes and toads live for a long time without air
or food. The following experiment was made by a Mr. Tower, of Gardiner
(Maine). An adder, upwards of two feet in length, was got into a glass
jar, which was tightly sealed. He was kept there for sixteen months
without any apparent change, and when let out, looked as well as when
put in, and crawled away.
“The common pond trout, when thrown into snow, will soon freeze, remain
so for days, and when put into cold water to remove the frost become
lively as ever.
“When residing in New Brunswick, in 1842, we went to a lake to secure
some trout, which were frozen in the snow and kept for use. While there
we saw men with long wooden tongs catching frost fish from the salt
water at the entrance of a brook. The fish were thrown upon the ice in
great quantities. We had a barrel of them put up with snow and kept
frozen, and in a cool place. For six or seven weeks they were taken
out and used as wanted, and might be kept frozen for an indefinite
time, and be alive when thawed in cold water. The two pieces of a fish,
cut in two when frozen, would move and try to swim when thawed in cold
water.”
SO-CALLED HUMAN HIBERNATION.
Dr. George Moore observes that “A state of the body is certainly
sometimes produced (in man) which is nearly analogous to the torpor of
the lower animals--_a condition utterly inexplicable to any principle
taught in the schools_. Who, for instance, can inform us how it happens
that certain fishes may be suddenly frozen in the Polar Sea, and so
remain during the long winter and yet be requickened into full activity
by returning summer?”--_Use of the Body in Relation to the Mind, p. 31._
[UNCERTAINTY OF DEATH.]
Hufeland, in his “Uncertainty of Death,” 1824, p. 12, observes that
it is easier for mankind to fall into a state of trance than the
lower creatures, on account of their complicated anatomy. It is a
transitory state between life and death, into which anyone may pass and
return from. Trance was common among the Greeks and Romans, who, just
before cremation, had the custom of cutting off a finger-joint, most
probably to discover if there was any trace of life. Death does not
come suddenly; it is a gradual process from actual life into apparent
death, and from that to actual death. It is a mistake to take outward
appearances for inner death.
“It often happens a person is buried in a trance knowing all the
preparations for the interment, and this affects him so much that it
prolongs the trance by its depressing influence. How long can a man
exist in a state of trance? Is there no sign by which the remaining
spark of life may be recognised? Do no means exist to prevent awakening
in the grave? Nothing can be said as to its duration; but we do know
that differences in the cause and circumstances will cause a difference
in duration. The amount of strength of the person would have great
effect in this. Weak persons, broken down by excesses, would die sooner
than the strong. The nature of the disease would make a difference. Old
age is less liable to trance than the young. Long sickness destroys
the sources of life, and shortens the process of death. Sorrow and
trouble, and numerous diseases, seem to bring on death; yet ofttimes
the source of life in them exists to its full extent, and what seems
in them to be death may be only a fainting fit, or cramp, which
temporarily interrupts the action of life. Women are more liable to
trance than men: most cases have happened in them. Trance may exist in
the new-born; give them time, and many of them revive. The smell of the
earth is at times sufficient to wake up a case of trance. Six or seven
days, or longer, are often required to restore such cases.” (Extracted
from pp. 10-24.)
[SELF-INDUCED HIBERNATION.]
Mr. Chunder Sen, municipal secretary to the Maharajah of Jeypore,
introduced the author, during his visit to India, March 8, 1896, to
a venerable and learned fakir, who was seated on a couch Buddhist
fashion, the feet turned towards the stomach, in the attitude of
meditation, in a small but comfortable house near the entrance to
the beautiful public gardens of that city. The fakir possesses the
power of self-induced trance, which really amounts to a suspension of
life, being indistinguishable from death. In the month of December,
1895, he passed into and remained in this condition for twenty days.
On several occasions the experiment has been conducted under test
conditions. In 1889, Dr. Hem Chunder Sen, of Delhi, and his brother,
Mr. Chunder Sen, had the opportunity of examining the fakir while
passing into a state of hibernation, and found that the pulse beat
slower and slower until it ceased to beat at all. The stethoscope was
applied to the heart by the doctor, who failed to detect the slightest
motion. The fakir, covered with a white shroud, was placed in a small
subterraneous cell built of masonry, measuring about six feet by six
feet, of rotund structure. The door was closed and locked, and the
lock sealed with Dr. Sen’s private seal and with that of Mr. Dhanna
Tal, the magistrate of the city; the flap door leading to the vault
was also carefully fastened. At the expiration of thirty-three days
the cell was opened, and the fakir was found just where he was placed,
but with a death-like appearance, the limbs having become stiff as in
_rigor mortis_. He was brought from the vault, and the mouth was rubbed
with honey and milk, and the body and joints massaged with oil. In the
evening, manifestations of life were exhibited, and the fakir was fed
with a spoonful of milk. The next day he was given a little juice of
pulses known as _dal_, and in three days he was able to eat bread and
milk, his normal diet. These cases are well known both at Delhi and
at Jeypore, and the facts have never been disputed. The fakir is a
Sanscrit scholar, and is said to be endowed with much wisdom, and is
consulted by those who are interested in Hindu learning and religion.
He has never received money from visitors, and the mention of it
distresses him.
The _Medical Times_ of May 11, 1850, contains a communication from Mr.
Braid, who says he has “lost no opportunity of accumulating evidence
on this subject, and that while many alleged feats of this kind are
probably of a deceptive character, still there are others which admit
of no such explanation; and that it becomes the duty of scientific men
fairly to admit the difficulty.” He then refers to two documents by
eye-witnesses of these feats, and which, he says, “with the previous
evidence on the subject, must set the point at rest for ever, as to
the fact of the feats referred to being genuine phenomena, deception
being impossible.” In one of these instances, the fakir was buried in
the ground for six weeks, and was, consequently, deprived not only of
food and drink, but also of light and air; when he was disinterred,
his legs and arms were shrivelled and stiff, but his face was full;
no pulse could be discovered in the heart, temples, or arms. “About
three years since I spent some time with a General C----, a highly
respectable and intelligent man, who had been a long time in the Indian
service, and who was himself an eye-witness of one of these feats. A
fakir was buried several feet in the earth, under vigilant inspection,
and a watch was set, so that no one could communicate with him; and to
make the matter doubly sure, corn was sown upon the grave, and during
the time the man was buried, it vegetated and grew to the height of
several inches. He lay there forty-two days. The gentleman referred to
passed the place many times during his burial, saw the growing corn,
was also present at his disinterment, and when he questioned the man,
and intimated to him that he thought deception had been practised, the
fakir offered, for a sum of money, to be buried again, for the same
length of time, by the General himself, and in his own garden. This
challenge, of course, closed the argument.”
[CASES REPORTED BY MR. BRAID.]
Cases of this kind might be multiplied on evidence which cannot be
doubted, and, in Mr. Braid’s book, entitled “Human Hibernation,” there
are cases fully stated. Sir Claude Wade, who was an eye-witness of
these feats when acting as political agent at the Court of Runjeet
Singh, at Lahore, and from whom Mr. Braid derived his information,
makes the following observations:--“I share entirely in the apparent
incredibility of the fact of a man being buried alive and surviving the
trial for various periods of duration; but however incompatible with
our knowledge of physiology, in the absence of any visible proof to the
contrary, I am bound to declare my belief in the facts which I have
represented, however impossible their existence may appear to others.”
Upon this Mr. Braid observes:--“Such then is the narrative of Sir C.
M. Wade, and when we consider the high character of the author as a
gentleman of honour, talents, and attainments of the highest order,
and the searching, painstaking efforts displayed by him throughout the
whole investigation, and his close proximity to the body of the fakir,
and opportunity of observing minutely every point for himself, as well
as the facilities, by his personal intercourse with Runjeet Singh and
the whole of his Court, of gaining the most accurate information on
every point, I conceive it is impossible to have had a more valuable
or conclusive document for determining the fact that no collusion or
deception existed.”
A case of this kind was exhibited at the Westminster Aquarium in the
autumn of 1895, which was carefully watched and tested by medical
experts, without detection of any appearance of fraud or simulation.
The hypnotised man, Walter Johnson, an ex-soldier, twenty-nine years of
age, was in a trance which lasted thirty days, during which time he was
absolutely unconscious, as shown by the various experiments to which he
was subjected.
A case of induced trance and experimental burial, not unlike that
of the Indian fakirs referred to, was reported in the London _Daily
Chronicle_, March 14, 1896. The experiment was carried out under test
conditions.
“‘BURIED ALIVE’ AT THE ROYAL AQUARIUM.
“After being entombed for six days in a hypnotic trance, Alfred
Wootton was dug up and awakened at the Royal Aquarium (Westminster),
on Saturday night in the presence of a crowd of interested spectators.
Wootton was hypnotised on Monday by Professor Fricker, and consigned
to his voluntary grave, nine feet deep, in view of the audience, who
sealed the stout casket or coffin in which the subject was immured.
Seven or eight feet of earth were then shovelled upon the body, a
shaft being left open for the necessary respiration, and in order
that the public might be able to see the man’s face during the week.
The experiment was a novel one in this country, and was intended to
illustrate the extraordinary effect produced by the Indian fakirs,
and to demonstrate the connection between hypnotism and psychology,
while also showing the value of the former art as a curative agent.
Wootton is a man thirty-eight years of age; he is a lead-worker,
and on Monday weighed 10st. 2-1/2 lbs. He had previously been in a
trance for a week in Glasgow, under Professor Fricker’s experienced
hands, so was not altogether new to the business; but he is the
first to be ‘buried alive’ by way of amusement. To the uninitiated
the whole thing was gruesome in the extreme, and this particular form
of entertainment certainly cannot be commended. Before being covered
in, Wootton’s nose and ears were stopped with wax, which was removed
before he was revived on Saturday. The theory of the burial is to
secure an equable temperature day and night--which is impossible when
the subject is above ground in the ordinary way--and therefore to
induce a deeper trance. Of course, too, the patient was out of reach
of the operator, and no suspicion of continuous hypnotising could rest
upon the professor. No nourishment could be supplied for the same
reason, though the man’s lips were occasionally moistened by means of
a damp sponge on the end of a rod, and no record of temperature or
respiration could be kept. A good many people witnessed the digging
up process, and the awakening took place in the concert room, whither
the casket and its burden were conveyed. The professor was not long
in arousing his subject, after electric and other tests had been
applied to convince the audience that the man was perfectly insensible
to pain and everything else. Indeed, a large needle was run through
the flesh on the back of the hand without any effect whatever. The
first thing on regaining consciousness that Wootton said was that he
could not see, and then he asked for drink--milk, and subsequently
a little brandy, being supplied. As soon as possible the patient
was lifted out of his box, and with help was quickly able to walk
about the platform. He complained of considerable stiffness of the
limbs, and was undoubtedly weak, but otherwise seemed none the worse
for his remarkable retirement from active life, and abstention from
food for nearly a week. He was swathed in flannel, and soon found
the heat of the room very oppressive, though at first he appeared to
be particularly anxious to have his overcoat and his boots. It is
anticipated that in a day or two at most Wootton will have regained
his usual vigorous health.”
[EXPERIMENTAL BURIAL.]
Dr. Hartmann in “Premature Burial,” page 23, relates an account of a
similar experiment with a fakir, differing from the above, however,
in so far as it was made by some English residents, who did not put
the coffin into the earth, but hung it up in the air, so as to protect
it from the danger of being eaten up by white ants. There seems to be
hardly any limitation in regard to the time during which such a body
may be preserved and become reanimated again, provided that it is well
protected, although modern ignorance may smile at this statement.
Those of our readers who wish to pursue this subject will find ample
material in “Observations on Trance or Human Hibernation,” 1850, by
James Braid, M.R.C.S.; Dr. Kuhn’s report of his investigations of the
Indian fakirs to the Anthropological Society of Munich, in 1895; the
researches of Dr. J. M. Honigberger, a German physician long resident
in India; and in the _India Journal of Medical and Physical Science_,
1836, vol. i., p. 389, etc.
CHAPTER IV.
PREMATURE BURIAL.
AT the sitting of the Paris Academy of Medicine, on April 10, 1827, a
paper was read by M. Chantourelle, on the danger of hasty burial. This
led to a discussion, in which M. Desgenettes stated that he had been
told by Dr. Thouret, who presided at the destruction of the vaults of
Les Innocens, that many skeletons had been found in positions seeming
to show that they had turned in their coffins. Dr. Thouret was so much
impressed by the circumstance that he had a special clause inserted in
his will relating to his own burial.[4]
Similar revelations, according to Kempner, have followed the
examinations of grave-yards in Holland, and in New York and other parts
of the United States.
On July 2, 1896, the author visited the grave of Madam Blunden, in the
Cemetery, Basingstoke, Hants, who, according to the inscription (now
obliterated), was buried alive. The following narrative appears in “The
Uncertainty of the Signs of Death,” by Surgeon M. Cooper, London, 1746,
pp. 78, 79:--
“At Basingstoke, in Hampshire, not many years ago, a gentlewoman of
character and fortune was taken ill, and, to all appearance, died,
while her husband was on a journey to London. A messenger was forthwith
despatched to the gentleman, who returned immediately, and ordered
everything for her decent interment. Accordingly, on the third day
after her supposed decease, she was buried in Holy Ghost Chapel, at the
outside of the town, in a vault belonging to the family, over which
there is a school for poor children endowed by a charitable gentleman
in the reign of Edward VI. It happened the next day that the boys,
while they were at play, heard a noise in the vault, and one of them
ran and told his master, who, not crediting what he said, gave him a
box on the ear and sent him about his business; but, upon the other
boys coming with the same story, his curiosity was awakened, so that he
sent immediately for the sexton, and opened the vault and the lady’s
coffin, where they found her just expiring. All possible means were
used to recover her to life, but to no purpose, for she, in her agony,
had bit the nails off her fingers, and tore her face and head to that
degree, that, notwithstanding all the care that was taken of her, she
died in a few hours in inexpressible torment.”
The _Sunday Times_, London, December 30, 1838, contains the following:--
“A frightful case of premature interment occurred not long since,
at Tonneins, in the Lower Garonne. The victim, a man in the prime
of life, had only a few shovelfuls of earth thrown into his grave,
when an indistinct noise was heard to proceed from his coffin. The
grave-digger, terrified beyond description, instantly fled to seek
assistance, and some time elapsed before his return, when the crowd,
which had by this time collected in considerable numbers round the
grave, insisted on the coffin being opened. As soon as the first
boards had been removed, it was ascertained, beyond a doubt, that the
occupant had been interred alive. His countenance was frightfully
contracted with the agony he had undergone; and, in his struggles, the
unhappy man had forced his arms completely out of the winding sheet,
in which they had been securely enveloped. A physician, who was on the
spot, opened a vein, but no blood followed. The sufferer was beyond
the reach of art.”
[RESUSCITATION IN GREENWOOD CEMETERY.]
Mr. Oscar F. Shaw, Attorney-at-Law, 145 Broadway, New York, furnished
the author with particulars of the following case, of which he had
personal knowledge:--“In or about the year 1851, Virginia M’Donald,
who, up to that time had lived with her father on Catharine Street,
in the City of New York, apparently died, and was buried in Greenwood
Cemetery, Brooklyn, N.Y.
“After the burial her mother declared her belief that the daughter
was not dead when buried, and persistently asserted her belief. The
family tried in various ways to assure the mother of the death of her
daughter, and even resorted to ridicule for that purpose; but the
mother insisted so long and so strenuously that her daughter was buried
alive, that finally the family consented to having the body taken up,
when to their horror, they discovered the body lying on the side, the
hands badly bitten, and every indication of a premature burial.”
The _Lancet_, May 22, 1858, p. 519, has the following:--
“INTERMENT BEFORE DEATH.
“A case of restoration to consciousness after burial is recorded by
the Austrian journals in the person of a rich manufacturer, named
Oppelt, at Rudenberg. He was buried fifteen years ago, and lately,
on opening the vault, the lid of the coffin was found forced open,
and his skeleton in a sitting posture in a corner of the vault. A
Government Commission has reported on the matter.”
From the _Lancet_, August 20, 1864, p. 219.
“PREMATURE INTERMENT.
“Amongst the papers left by the great Meyerbeer, were some which
showed that he had a profound dread of premature interment. He
directed, it is stated, that his body should be left for ten days
undisturbed, with the face uncovered, and watched night and day. Bells
were to be fastened to his feet. And at the end of the second day
veins were to be opened in the arm and leg. This is the gossip of the
capital in which he died. The first impression is that such a fear is
morbid. No doubt fewer precautions would suffice, but now and again
cases occur which seem to warrant such a feeling, and to show that
want of caution may lead to premature interment in cases unknown. An
instance is mentioned by the _Ost. Deutscher Post_ of Vienna. A few
days since, runs the story, in the establishment of the Brothers of
Charity in that capital, the bell of the dead-room was heard to ring
violently, and on one of the attendants proceeding to the place to
ascertain the cause, he was surprised at seeing one of the supposed
dead men pulling the bell-rope. He was removed immediately to another
room, and hopes are entertained of his recovery.”
From the _Times_, July 7, 1867, p. 12, col. 3.
“The _Journal de Pontarlier_ relates a case of premature interment.
During the funeral, three days back, of a young woman at Montflorin,
who had apparently died in an epileptic fit, the grave-digger, after
having thrown a spadeful of earth on the coffin, thought he heard a
moaning from the tomb. The body was consequently exhumed, and a vein
having been opened, yielded blood almost warm and liquid. Hopes were
for a moment entertained that the young woman would recover from her
lethargy, but she never did so entirely, and the next day life was
found to be extinct.”
From the _Lancet_, October 19, 1867, p. 504.
“BURIED ALIVE.
[INTERRED WITH USUAL FORMALITIES.]
“The _Journal de Morlaix_ mentions that a young woman at Bohaste,
France, who was supposed to have died from cholera a few days back,
was buried on the following afternoon. The sexton, when about to
fill in the grave, fancied that he heard a noise in the coffin, and
sent for the medical officer, who, on removing the lid and examining
the body, gave it as his opinion that the woman had been alive when
buried.”
The official journal of the French Senate, January 30, 1869, records
that the attention of the Senate was called to this case by means
of a petition signed by seven residents in Paris, and the facts are
confirmed by L. Roger, _Officier de Santé_.
From the _Times_, May 6, 1874, p. 11, foot of col. 4.
“PREMATURE INTERMENT.
“The _Messager du Midi_ relates the following dreadful story:--A young
married woman residing at Salon (Bouches du Rhône) died shortly after
her confinement in August last. The medical man, who was hastily
summoned when her illness assumed a dangerous form, certified her
death, and recommended immediate burial in consequence of the intense
heat then prevailing, and six hours afterwards the body was interred.
A few days since, the husband having resolved to re-marry, the mother
of his late wife desired to have her daughter’s remains removed to her
native town, Marseilles. When the vault was opened a horrible sight
presented itself. The corpse lay in the middle of the vault, with
dishevelled hair and the linen torn to pieces. It evidently had been
gnawed in her agony by the unfortunate victim. The shock which the
dreadful spectacle caused to the mother has been so great that fears
are entertained for her reason, if not for her life.”
The _British Medical Journal_, December 8, 1877, p. 819, inserts the
following:--
“BURIED ALIVE.
“A correspondent at Naples states that the Appeal Court has had before
it a case not likely to inspire confidence in the minds of those who
look forward with horror to the possibility of being buried alive. It
appeared from the evidence that some time ago a woman was interred
with all the usual formalities, it being believed that she was dead,
while she was only in a trance. Some days afterwards, the grave in
which she had been placed being opened for the reception of another
body, it was found that the clothes which covered the unfortunate
woman were torn to pieces, and that she had even broken her limbs in
attempting to extricate herself from the living tomb. The Court, after
hearing the case, sentenced the doctor who had signed the certificate
of decease, and the mayor who had authorised the interment, each to
three months’ imprisonment for involuntary manslaughter.”
From the _Daily Telegraph_, January 18, 1889.
“A gendarme was buried alive the other day in a village near Grenoble.
The man had become intoxicated on potato brandy, and fell into a
profound sleep. After twenty hours passed in slumber, his friends
considered him to be dead, particularly as his body assumed the
usual rigidity of a corpse. When the sexton, however, was lowering
the remains of the ill-fated gendarme into the grave, he heard moans
and knocks proceeding from the interior of the ‘four-boards.’ He
immediately bored holes in the sides of the coffin, to let in air, and
then knocked off the lid. The gendarme had, however, ceased to live,
having horribly mutilated his head in his frantic but futile efforts
to burst his coffin open.”
[EVIDENCE OF UNDERTAKERS.]
[HORRIFYING CASES.]
The _Undertakers’ and Funeral Directors’ Journal_, July 22, 1889,
relates the following cases:--
“A New York undertaker recently told the following story, the
circumstances of which are still remembered by old residents of the
city:--‘About forty years ago a lady living on Division Street, New
York City, fell dead, apparently, while in the act of dancing at a
ball. It was a fashionable affair, and being able to afford it, she
wore costly jewellery. Her husband, a flour merchant, who loved her
devotedly, resolved that she should be interred in her ball dress,
diamonds, pearls, and all; also that there should be no autopsy. As
the weather was very inclement when the funeral reached the cemetery,
the body was placed in the receiving vault for burial next day. The
undertaker was not a poor man, but he was avaricious, and he made up
his mind to possess the jewellery. He went in the night, and took
the lady’s watch from the folds of her dress. He next began to draw
a diamond ring from her finger, and in doing so had to use violence
enough to tear the skin. Then the lady moved and groaned, and the
thief, terrified and conscience-stricken, fled from the cemetery, and
has never been since heard from, that I know of. The lady, after the
first emotions of horror at her unheard-of position had passed over,
gathered her nerves together and stepped out of the vault, which
the thief had left open. How she came home I cannot tell; but this
I know--she lived and had children, two at least of whom are alive
to-day.’
“Another New York undertaker told this story. The New York papers
thirty-five years ago were full of its ghastly details. ‘The daughter
of a Court Street baker died. It was in winter, and the father,
knowing that a married sister of his dead child, who lived in St.
Louis, would like to see her face before laid in the grave for ever,
had the body placed in the vault, waiting her arrival. The sister
came, the vault was opened, the lid of the coffin taken off, when,
to the unutterable horror of the friends assembled, they found the
grave-clothes torn in shreds, and the fingers of both hands eaten off.
The girl had been buried alive.’
“Until about forty years ago a noted family of Virginia preserved a
curious custom, which had been religiously observed for more than a
century. Over a hundred years ago a member of the family died, and,
upon being exhumed, was found to have been buried alive. From that
time until about 1850, every member of the family, man, woman, or
child, who died, was stabbed in the heart with a knife in the hands of
the head of the house. The reason for the cessation of this custom was
that in 1850 or thereabouts a beautiful young girl was supposed to be
dead, the knife was plunged into her bosom, when she gave vent to a
fearful scream and died. She had merely been in a trance. The incident
broke her father’s heart, and in a fit of remorse he killed himself
not long afterwards.
“There are many families in the United States who, when any of their
number dies, insist that an artery be opened to determine whether life
has fled or not.”
The following remarkable case of waking in the grave is reported from
Vienna:--
“A lady residing at Derbisch, near Kolin, in Bohemia, where she owned
considerable property, was buried last week, after a brief illness,
in the family vault at the local cemetery. Four days afterwards her
granddaughter was interred in the same place, but as the stone slab
covering the aperture was removed, the bystanders were horrified to
see that the lid of the coffin below had been raised, and that the arm
of the corpse was protruding. It was ascertained eventually that the
unfortunate lady, who was supposed to have died of heart disease, had
been buried alive. She had evidently recovered consciousness for a few
minutes, and had found strength enough to burst open her coffin. The
authorities are bent on taking measures of the utmost severity against
those responsible.”--_Undertakers’ Journal, August 22, 1889._
The _Undertakers’ and Funeral Directors’ Journal_, July 22, 1890.
“A horrible story comes from Majola, Mantua. The body of a woman,
named Lavrinia Merli, a peasant, who was supposed to have died from
hysterics, was placed in a vault on Thursday, July 3. On Saturday
evening it was found that the woman had regained consciousness, torn
her grave-clothes in her struggles, had turned completely over in the
coffin, and had given birth to a seven-months’-old child. Both mother
and child were dead when the coffin was opened for the last time
previous to interment.”
“A shocking occurrence is reported from Cesa, a little village
near Naples. A woman living at that place was recently seized with
sudden illness. A doctor who was called certified that the woman was
dead, and the body was consequently placed in a coffin, which was
deposited in the watch-house of the local cemetery. Next day an old
woman passing close to the cemetery thought she heard smothered cries
proceeding from the watch-house. The family was informed, but when the
lid of the coffin was forced off a shocking spectacle presented itself
to the gaze of the horrified villagers. The wretched woman had turned
on her side, and the position of her arm showed that she had made a
desperate effort to raise the lid. The eldest son, who was among the
persons who broke open the coffin, received such a shock that he died
three days later.”--_Undertakers’ Journal, September 22, 1893._
The _Progressive Thinker_, of November 14, 1891, relates that:--
“Farmer George Hefdecker, who lived at Erie, Pa., died very suddenly
two weeks ago, of what is supposed to have been heart failure. The
body was buried temporarily four days later in a neighbour’s lot in
the Erie cemetery pending the purchase of one by his family. The
transfer was made in a few days, and when the casket was opened at
the request of his family, a horrifying spectacle was presented. The
body had turned round, and the face and interior of the casket bore
the traces of a terrible struggle with death in its most awful shape.
The distorted and blood-covered features bore evidence of the agony
endured. The clothing about the head and neck had been torn into
shreds, as was likewise the lining of the coffin. Bloody marks of
finger nails on the face, throat, and neck, told of the awful despair
of the doomed man, who tore his own flesh in his terrible anguish.
Several fingers had been entirely bitten off, and the hands torn with
the teeth until they scarcely resembled those of a human being.”
From the London _Echo_, October 6, 1894.
“BURIED ALIVE.
“A story of a horrible nature comes from St. Petersburg in connection
with the interment at Tioobayn, near that city, of a peasant girl
named Antonova. She had presumably died, and in due course the funeral
took place. After the service at the cemetery, the grave-diggers were
startled by sounds of moaning proceeding from the coffin. Instead,
however, of instantly breaking it open, they rushed off to find a
doctor, and when he and some officials arrived and broke open the
shell, the unhappy inmate was already the corpse she had been supposed
to be a day earlier. It was evident, however, that no efforts could
have saved life at the last moment. The body was half-turned in the
coffin, the left hand, having escaped its bandages, being under the
cheek.”
The following case, cabled by Dalziel, appears in the London _Star_,
August 19, 1895:--
“SOUNDS FROM ANOTHER COFFIN.
“Grenoble, August 17.
“On Monday last a man was found in a dying condition by the side of
a brook near the village of Le Pin. Everything possible was done
for him, but he relapsed into unconsciousness, and became to all
appearances dead. The funeral was arranged, and, there being no
suspicion of foul play, the body was interred on the following day.
The coffin had been lowered to the bottom of the grave, and the
sexton had begun to cover it with earth, when he heard muffled sounds
proceeding from it. The earth was hastily removed and the coffin
opened, when it was discovered that the unfortunate occupant was
alive. He was taken to a neighbouring house, but rapidly sank into
a comatose condition, and died without uttering a word. The second
burial took place yesterday.”
While in India, in the early part of this year (1896), Dr. Roger S.
Chew, of Calcutta, who, having been laid out for dead, and narrowly
escaped living sepulture, has had the best reasons for studying the
subject, gave me particulars of the following cases:--
“Frank Lascelles, aged thirty-two years, was seated at breakfast with
a number of us young fellows, and was in the middle of a burst of
hearty laughter, when his head fell forward on his plate and he was
‘dead.’ As there was a distinct history of cardiac disease in his
family, while he himself had frequently been treated for valvular
disease of the heart, he was alleged to have ‘died’ of cardiac
failure, and was duly interred in the Coonor Cemetery. Some six months
later, permission was obtained to remove his remains to St. John’s
Church-yard in Ootacamund. The coffin was exhumed, and, as a ‘matter
of form,’ the lid removed to identify the resident, when, to the
horror of the lookers-on, it was noticed that, though mummification
had taken place, there had been a fearful struggle underground, for
the body, instead of being on its back as it was when first coffined,
was _lying on its face_, with its arms and legs drawn up as close
as the confined space would permit. His trousers (a perfectly new
pair) were burst at the left knee, while his shirt-front was torn to
ribands and bloodstained, and the wood of that portion of the coffin
immediately below his mouth was stained a deep reddish-brown-black
(_blood_). Old Dr. Donaldson, whom we were all very fond of, tried to
explain matters by saying that the jolting of the coffin on its way
to the cemetery had overturned the body, and that the blood stains on
the shirt and wood were the natural result of blood flowing (_i.e._
oozing) out of the mouth of the corpse as it lay face downwards.
A nice theory, but scarcely a probable one, as all the jolting in
creation could not possibly turn a corpse over in an Indian coffin,
which is so built that there is scarcely two inches spare space over
any portion of the contained body, and unless the supposed corpse
regained consciousness and exerted _considerable_ force, it could not
possibly turn round in its _narrow_ casket.
[DR. ROGER S. CHEW’S CASES.]
“Mary Norah Best, aged seventeen years, an adopted daughter of Mrs.
C. A. Moore, _née_ Chew, ‘died’ of cholera, and was entombed in the
Chew’s vault in the old French cemetery, at Calcutta. The certifying
surgeon was a man who would have benefited by her death, and had twice
(though ineffectually) attempted to put an end to her adopted mother,
who fled from India to England after the second attempt on her life,
but, unfortunately, left the girl behind. When Mary ‘died’ she was
put into a _pine_ coffin, the lid of which was _nailed_, not screwed,
down. In 1881, ten years or so later, the vault was unsealed to admit
the body of Mrs. Moore’s brother, J. A. A. Chew. On entering the
vault, the undertaker’s assistant and I found the lid of Mary’s coffin
on the floor, while the position of the skeleton (half in, half out of
the coffin, and an ugly gash across the right parietal bone) _plainly_
showed that after being entombed Mary awoke from her trance, struggled
violently till she wrenched the lid off her coffin, when she either
fainted away with the strain of the effort in bursting open her
casket, and while falling forward over the edge of her coffin struck
her head against the masonry shelf, and died almost immediately;
or, worse still,--as surmised by some of her clothing which was
found hanging over the edge of the coffin, and the position of her
right hand, the fingers of which were bent and close to where her
throat would have been had the flesh not rotted away,--she recovered
consciousness, fought for life, forced her coffin open, and, sitting
up in the pitchy darkness of the vault, went mad with fright, tore her
clothes off, tried to throttle herself, and banged her head against
the masonry shelf until she fell forward senseless and dead.”
Dr. Chew says:--“Though a layman, still it would be hard to find
a more indefatigable sanitarian than my late commanding officer,
Lieutenant-Colonel R. C. Sterndale, of the Presidency Volunteer Rifle
Battalion, and for many years vice-chairman of the municipality of the
suburbs of Calcutta. In order to prove his theory that a great deal of
danger existed in the rainy season from subsoil water rising up into
the graves, saturating the bodies, and then poisoning the neighbouring
tanks and wells, he caused a trench, ten feet long, six deep, and four
wide, to be dug across an old Mahomedan grave-yard. Soundings and
measurements having been taken of the subsoil water, he had a tarpaulin
stretched over the trench, and daily measured the ‘fall’ of the
water-level. He had a drawing made of the section of that grave-yard
in which the action of the nitre-laden water seemed to mummify some
of the bodies. Amongst the rest was a somewhat mummified male corpse
which, instead of being on his back, was lying on his abdomen; the left
arm supported the chin, but had a piece of it missing; the right hand
clutched the left elbow, and the general position of the body was as
if, consciousness having returned, the alleged corpse sat up, found
the weight of the earth too heavy to work through, and then, dying of
suffocation, fell forward in the position in which it was found and
exposed.”
Dr. Chew adds:--“I have heard and read of several other instances, but,
as they have not come within my personal observation, I do not mention
or refer to them.”
CHAPTER V.
NARROW ESCAPES FROM PREMATURE BURIAL.
ALMOST every intelligent and observant person you converse with,
if the subject is introduced, has either known or heard of narrow
escapes of premature burial within his or her own circle of friends
or acquaintances; and it is no exaggeration to say that such cases
are numbered by thousands. It is to be hoped that the number of
timely discoveries vastly exceed those actually interred in a state
of suspended animation; but as no investigation of grave-yards or
cemeteries (which effectually conceal their own tragedies) has ever
taken place in England until the remains are reduced to dust, and
rarely in other countries, one cannot be sure that this optimistic view
is correct. The following cases of narrow escape appear to rest upon
trustworthy evidence.
An apparent suspension of life, following a serious illness, is usually
considered a satisfactory proof of the reality of the expected death;
but these conditions cannot always be relied upon. Cases are on record
where the objects of such simulacra of death appear, if let alone, to
gather the essence of renewed vitality, and return to consciousness.
The _Undertakers’ and Funeral Directors’ Journal_ of May, 1888, has a
case in point.
[A RESUSCITATED HUMORIST.]
“Mrs. Lockhart, of Birkhill, who died in 1825, used to relate to
her grandchildren the following anecdote of her ancestor, Sir
William Lindsay, of Covington, towards the close of the seventeenth
century:--‘Sir William was a humorist, and noted, moreover, for
preserving the picturesque appendage of a beard at a period when the
fashion had long passed away. He had been extremely ill, and life
was at last supposed to be extinct, though, as it afterwards turned
out, he was merely in a “dead faint” or trance. The female relatives
were assembled for the “chesting”--the act of putting a corpse into a
coffin, with the entertainment given on such melancholy occasions--in
a lighted chamber in the old tower of Covington, where the “bearded
knight” lay stretched upon his bier. But when the servants were
about to enter to assist at the ceremonies, Isabella Somerville, Sir
William’s great-granddaughter, and Mrs. Lockhart’s grandmother, then
a child, creeping close to her mother, whispered into her ear, “The
beard is wagging! the beard is wagging!” Mrs. Somerville, upon this,
looked to the bier, and observing indications of life in the ancient
knight, made the company retire, and Sir William soon came out of his
faint. Hot bottles were applied and cordials administered, and in
the course of the evening he was able to converse with his family.
They explained that they had believed him to be actually dead, and
that arrangements had even been made for his funeral. In answer to
the question, “Have the folks been warned?” (_i.e._, invited to the
funeral) he was told that they had--that the funeral day had been
fixed, an ox slain, and other preparations made for entertaining the
company. Sir William then said, “All is as it should be; keep it a
dead secret that I am in life, and let the folks come.” His wishes
were complied with, and the company assembled for the burial at the
appointed time. After some delay, occasioned by the non-arrival of
the clergyman, as was supposed, and which afforded an opportunity of
discussing the merits of the deceased, the door suddenly opened, when,
to their surprise and terror, in stepped the knight himself, pale in
countenance and dressed in black, leaning on the arm of the minister
of the parish of Covington. Having quieted their alarm and explained
matters, he called upon the clergyman to conduct an act of devotion,
which included thanksgiving for his recovery and escape from being
buried alive. This done, the dinner succeeded. A jolly evening, after
the manner of the time, was passed, Sir William himself presiding over
the carousals.’”
Dr. J. B. Vigné, in his “Memoire sur les Inhumations Précipitées,”
Paris, 1839, narrates the following:-- “Mr. B., an inhabitant of
Poitiers, fell suddenly into a state resembling death; every means
for bringing him back to life were used without interruption; from
continued dragging, his two little fingers were dislocated, and the
soles of his feet were burnt; but, all these having produced no
sensation in him, he was thought decidedly dead. As they were on the
point of placing him in his coffin, some one recommended that he should
be bled in both arms and feet at the same time, which was immediately
done, and with such success that, to the astonishment of all, he
recovered from his apparent state of death. When he had entirely
recovered his senses, he declared that he had heard every word that had
been said, and that his only fear was that he would be buried alive.”
APPARENT DEATH IN PREGNANCY.
Hufeland (one of the greatest authorities on the subject in Germany),
in his essay upon the uncertainty of the signs of death, tells of a
case of the wife of Professor Camerer, of Tübingen, who was hysterical,
and had a fright in the sixth month of her pregnancy, which brought
on convulsions (eclampsia), which continued for four hours, when she
seemed to die completely. Two celebrated physicians, besides three
others of less note, regarded the case as ended in death, as all the
recognised signs of death were present. However, attempts to revive
her were at once resorted to, and were continued for five hours, when
all the medical attendants, except one, gave the case up, and left.
The physician who remained pulled off a blister-plaster that had
been put on one of the feet, when the lady gave feeble signs of life
by twitchings about the mouth. The doctor then renewed his efforts
to revive her, by various stimulating means, and by burning, and by
pricking the spine; but all in vain, for after her slight evidences of
revival, she seemed to die unmistakably. She lay in a state of apparent
death for six days, but there was a small space over the heart where a
little warmth could be detected by the hand, and on this account the
burial was put off. On the seventh day she opened her eyes, and slowly
revived, but was completely unconscious of all that had happened. She
then gave birth to a dead child, and soon thereafter recovered her
health completely.
* * * * *
[MORE CAREFUL EXAMINATION REQUIRED.]
From the _Lancet_, November 27, 1858, p. 561.
“THE DEAD ALIVE.
“It seems to be always desirable to obtain a contemporary record
of all unusual phenomena. It is so more especially where they are
of a somewhat indefinite character, and scarcely susceptible of
exaggeration. We know of none which are more so than the cases of
‘trance.’ These examples are both sufficiently unusual to deserve a
passing record, and sufficiently mysterious in their character to call
for a more careful investigation than it has hitherto been possible to
accord to them. We transcribe the facts of a recent instance, as they
are circumstantially detailed, and, no doubt, some of the surgeons of
Coventry will be able to afford their testimony as to the degree of
correspondence of this narrative with their observations. “The girl,
whose name is Amelia Hinks, is twelve or thirteen years of age, and
resides with her parents in Bridge Street, Nuneaton. She had lately
appeared to be sinking under the influence of some ill-explained
disorder, and about three weeks since, as her friends imagined, she
died. The body was removed to another room. It was rigid and icy cold.
It was washed and laid out with all due funeral train. The limbs were
decently placed, the eyelids closed and penny-pieces laid over them.
The coffin was ordered. For more than forty-eight hours the supposed
corpse lay beneath the winding-sheet, when it happened that her
grandfather, coming from Leamington to assist in the last mournful
ceremonies, went to see the corpse. The old man removed a penny-piece,
and he thought that the corpse winked! There was a convulsive movement
of the lid. This greatly disturbed his composure; for, though he had
heard that she died with her eyes open, he was unprepared for this
palpebral signal of her good understanding with death. A surgeon is
said to have been summoned, who at first treated the matter as a
delusion, but subsequently ascertained stethoscopically that there
was still slight cardiac pulsation. The body was then removed to a
warm room, and gradually the returning signs of animation became
unequivocal. When speech was restored, the girl described many things
which had taken place since her supposed death. She knew who had
closed her eyes and placed the coppers thereon. She also heard the
order given for her coffin, and could repeat the various remarks made
over her as she lay in her death-clothes. She refused food, though in
a state of extreme debility. She has since shown symptoms of mania,
and is now said to have relapsed into a semi-cataleptic condition. The
parents are ‘creditable people,’ and there is no apparent ruse in this
unusually romantic history, which is causing considerable excitement
in Nuneaton and its neighbourhood.”
* * * * *
From the _Lancet_, December 18, 1858, p. 642.
“‘THE DEAD ALIVE.’
“(To the Editor of the _Lancet_.)
“Sir,--An article, ‘The Dead Alive,’ in your impression of the 27th
ultimo, demands of me a veritable statement of the case alluded to.
The subject of the inquiry is still living, and for some time past has
afforded me scope for observation.
[THE DEAD ALIVE.]
“I have only been waiting for a termination of the case, either in
convalescence or death, to enable me to give to the profession,
through your valuable columns, a full and truthful history of this
rare and curious case, replete with interest. The exaggerated
statement which has gone the round of the press has produced such
great curiosity in this immediate neighbourhood that I have been
applied to by many parties, professional and non-professional, to be
permitted to see the case, the parents of the patient having refused
admittance to all strangers.
“The case having extended over a long period, and fearing a detailed
account might occupy too much of your valuable space, I have condensed
the matter as much as possible; but should the profession consider
the case worthy of a more enlarged history, I will gladly, at some
future period, meet their wishes, as far as my rough notes, aided by
my memory, will supply it.
“In August, 1858, I was requested to visit Miss Amelia Hincks, aged
twelve years and nine months, daughter of a harness-maker, and
residing with her parents in Bridge Street, Nuneaton. She was supposed
to be suffering from pulmonary consumption.... On October 18, about
half-past three a.m., she apparently died. She is said to have groaned
heavily, waved her hands (which was a promised sign for her mother
to know that the hour of her departure was come), turned her head
a little to the light, dropped her jaw, and _died_. In about half
an hour after her supposed departure she was washed, and attired in
clean linen, the jaw was tied by a white handkerchief, penny-pieces
laid over her eyes, her hands, semi-clenched, placed by her side,
and her feet tied together by a piece of tape. She was then carried
into another room, laid on a sofa, and covered over with a sheet. She
appeared stiff and cold, two large books were placed on her feet, and
I have no doubt she was considered to be a sweet corpse.
“About nine a.m., the grandfather of the supposed dead went into the
death-chamber to give a last kiss to his grandchild, when he fancied
he saw a convulsive movement of the eyelid, he having raised one of
the coins. He communicated this fact to the parents and mourning
friends, but they ridiculed the old man’s statement, and said the
movement of the eyelids was owing to the nerves working after death.
Their theory, however, did not satisfy the experienced man of eighty
years, and he could not reconcile himself to her death. As soon as
I reached home, after having been out in the country all night, I
was requested to see the child, to satisfy the old man that she was
really dead. About half-past ten a.m. I called; and immediately
on my entrance into the chamber I perceived a tremulous condition
of the eyelids, such as we frequently see in hysterical patients.
The penny-pieces had been removed by the grandfather. I placed a
stethoscope over the region of the heart, and found that organ
performing its functions perfectly and with tolerable force. I then
felt for a radial pulse, which was easily detected, beating feebly,
about seventy-five per minute. The legs and arms were stiff and cold,
and the capillary circulation was so congested as at first sight to
resemble incipient decomposition. I carefully watched the chest, which
heaved quietly but almost imperceptibly; and immediately unbandaged
the maiden, and informed her mourning parents that she was not dead.
Imagine their consternation! The passing-bell had rung, the shutters
were closed, the undertaker was on his way to measure her for her
coffin, and other necessary preparations were being made for her
interment. [The writer then proceeds to give interesting details as to
the treatment of the case, and the means taken to promote recovery.]
“RICHARD BIRD MASON, M.R.C.S., L.S.A.
“Bridge Street, Nuneaton, December 14, 1858.”
From the _Lancet_, March 5, 1859, p. 254.
“TRANCE.
“Another case of trance is reported, in addition to those which we
have lately recorded. A widow named Aufray, about sixty years of age,
of St. Agnan de Cenuières (Eure), long seriously ill, became suddenly
worse, grew cold and motionless, and, as it was thought, dead. She
was laid out, the coffin ordered, and the church bell tolled. She
recovered consciousness just before the funeral was to take place.”
THE QUESTION OF PREMATURE BURIAL BEFORE THE FRENCH SENATE.
[FRENCH CASES.]
The _Medical Times_, London, 1866, vol. i., p. 258, under the heading
“Buried Alive” remarks as follows:--“The abundance of other topics
hinders us at present from saying more than a few words on the
conditions under which there may be real danger of burial before life
is quite extinct. Now, we will only reproduce the cases reported by
Cardinal Archbishop Donnet, in the French Senate, in a discussion
on a petition that the time between death and burial should be
lengthened. We will add one instance, which we have heard on the best
authority:--About thirty years ago, a young woman of eighteen, daughter
of Madame Laligand, living in the Rue des Tonnelliers, at Beaune,
in Burgundy, was supposed to have died. The ordinary measures were
taken for interment. The body was put in a coffin, and taken to the
church; the funeral service was said, and the _cortége_ set out for
the cemetery; but on the road between the church and the cemetery the
supposed dead recovered power of motion and speech, was removed from
the coffin, put to bed, recovered, married, and lived eighteen years
afterwards. She said she retained her consciousness during the whole
of her supposed death, and had counted the nails that were driven
into her coffin. Statements such as these, and such as those made by
the Archbishop, will surely be subjected to the ordeal of a French
scientific commission, and we may suspend our judgment for the present.
To return to his Eminence. He said he had the very best reasons for
believing that the victims of hasty interments were more numerous than
people supposed. He considered the rules and regulations prescribed by
the law very judicious; but, unfortunately, they were, particularly in
the country, not always executed as they should be, nor was sufficient
importance attached to them. In the village he was stationed in as
an assistant-curate in the first period of his sacerdotal life, he
saved two persons from being buried alive. The first an aged man, who
lived twelve hours after the hour prescribed for his interment by the
municipal officer; the second was a man who was quite restored to life.
In both cases a trance more prolonged than usual was taken for actual
death. The other instances, says the _Times’_ correspondent, I give in
the words of the Archbishop:--
“‘The next case that occurred to me was at Bordeaux. A young lady, who
bore one of the most distinguished names in the Department, had passed
through what was supposed the last agony, and, as apparently all was
over, the father and mother were torn away from the heartrending
spectacle. As God willed it, I happened to pass the door of the house
at the moment, when it occurred to me to call and inquire how the
young lady was going on. When I entered the room, the nurse, finding
the body breathless, was in the act of covering the face, and, indeed,
there was every appearance that life had departed. Somehow or other,
it did not seem to me so certain as to the bystanders. I lady not to
give up all hope--that I was come to cure her, and that I was about
to pray by her side. “You do not see me,” I said, “but you hear what
I am saying.” My presentiments were not unfounded. The word of hope I
uttered reached her ear and effected a marvellous change, or, rather,
called back the life that was departing. The young girl survived; she
is now a wife, and mother of children, and this day is the happiness
of two most respectable families.’
“The Archbishop mentioned another instance of a similar revival in a
town in Hungary during the cholera of 1831, which he heard that day
from one of his colleagues of the Senate, as they were mounting the
staircase. But the last related is so interesting, and made such a
sensation, that it deserves to be repeated in his own words:--
[CARDINAL DONNET’S EXPERIENCE.]
“‘In the summer of 1826, on a close summer day, in a church which was
exceedingly crowded, a young priest, who was in the act of preaching,
was suddenly seized with giddiness in the pulpit. The words he was
uttering became indistinct; he soon lost the power of speech, and
sank down on the floor. He was taken out of the church and carried
home. All was thought to be over. Some hours after, the funeral bell
was tolled, and the usual preparations made for the interment. His
eyesight was gone: but if he could see nothing, like the young lady I
have alluded to he could hear, and I need not say that what reached
his ears was not calculated to reassure him. The doctor came, examined
him, and pronounced him dead; and after the usual inquiries as to
his age and the place of his birth, etc., gave permission for his
interment next morning. The venerable bishop, in whose cathedral the
young priest was preaching when he was seized with the fit, came to
his bedside to recite the “De Profundis.” The body was measured for
the coffin. Night came on, and you will easily feel how inexpressible
was the anguish of the living being in such a situation. At last,
amid the voices murmuring around him, he distinguished that of one
whom he had known from infancy. That voice produced a marvellous
effect and superhuman effort. Of what followed I need say no more
than that the seemingly dead man stood next day in the same pulpit.
That young priest, gentlemen, is the same man who is now speaking
before you, and who, more than forty years after that event, implores
those in authority, not merely to watch vigilantly over the careful
execution of the legal prescriptions with regard to interments, but
to enact fresh ones in order to prevent the recurrence of irreparable
misfortunes.’”
To this report of the _Medical Times_ it may be added that the
petition of M. de Carnot furnished statistics showing the frequency of
these terrible disasters, and suggested various preventive measures,
including the establishment of mortuaries, a longer interval between
death and burial, and the application of scientific methods of
restoration where decomposition is not manifest. The reality of the
terrible dangers, as pointed out by Cardinal Donnet, was confirmed by
Senators Tourangin and Viscount de Baral, in the recital of other cases
of premature interment.
When the subject was revived in the Senate on January 29, 1869--on
which occasion five petitions were presented, urging important reforms,
and detailing other cases of premature interment,--Cardinal Donnet
again took part in the debate, and urged that no burial should be
permitted without the signature of a doctor or officer of health, as
well as the written authorisation of the Mayor, so that the fact of
death might always be verified. The Cardinal then furnished particulars
of another recent case of premature interment in l’Est, and recalled
the fact that one of their honourable colleagues of the Senate, M. le
Comte de la Rue, had had a narrow escape from live sepulture.
The several petitions were forwarded to the Minister of the Interior,
but nothing was done to remedy the evil.
From the _Lancet_, June 2, 1866, p. 611.
“ON SUSPENDED ANIMATION.
“In the course of the address delivered by Dr. Brewer to the Guardians
of St. George’s at St. James’s Hall, he adverted to the ‘laying-out’
case at St. Pancras.... Dr. Brewer ... dwelt upon the question of
suspended animation in a passage which really deserves to be quoted....
[CASE REPORTED BY DR. BREWER.]
“‘I have been more than once under a condition of apparently suspended
respiration, and with circumstances less comfortable than those
related of this babe; and yet, active as is my brain, and sensitive
as is my body, I remember as well as though it were but yesterday
that, on being restored to consciousness, no feeling of discomfort
of any kind attended my experience on either occasion. It is under
the truth to say I have known a score of cases of those who have been
supposed dead being reanimated. It is not many months ago a friend of
mine, a rector of a suburban parish, was pronounced by his medical
attendant to be dead. His bed was arranged, and the room left in its
silence. His daughter had re-entered and sat at the foot, and the
solemn toll of his own church bell was vibrating through the chamber,
when a hand drew aside the closed curtain, and a voice came from the
occupant of the bed--“Elizabeth, my dear, what is that bell tolling
for?” The daughter’s response was, perhaps, an unfortunate one: “_For
you, papa._” Schwartz, the first eminent Indian missionary, was roused
from his supposed death by hearing his favourite hymn sung over him
previous to the last rites being performed, and his resuscitation made
known by his joining in the verse.’”
Dr. B. W. Richardson quotes a case in the _Lancet_, 1888, vol.
ii., p. 1179, of a man who, in 1869, was rendered cataleptic by a
lightning-stroke, and who narrowly escaped living burial.
Dr. Moore Russell Fletcher in his work on “Suspended Animation,” p. 26,
says:--
“In June, 1869, a girl in Cleveland, Ohio, was taken ill, and after a
short sickness died, and was laid out for burial; but as her mother
insisted that she was not dead, efforts were made for some time to
restore her to life, but in vain. Her mother, however, refused to let
her be buried; and on the fifth day after that set for the funeral
the slamming of a door aroused her, so that she recovered. She stated
that, during most of the eight days which she lay there, she was
conscious and heard what was said, although wholly unable to make the
least motion.”
Dr. M. S. Tanner in a letter to the _New York Times_, January 18, 1880,
mentions two cases where persons awakened from trance at the moment of
sepulture described in turn what their feelings had been. Said one:--
“Have you ever felt the paralysing influence of a horrible nightmare?
If you have had such experience, then you are prepared to conceive of
the mental agonies I endured when I realised that my friends believed
me dead, and were making preparations for my burial. The hours and
days of mental struggle spent in the vain endeavour to break loose
from the vice-like grasp of this worse than horrible nightmare was a
hell of torment such as no tongue can describe or pen portray.”
[VERDICT OF FOURTEEN PHYSICIANS.]
The other instance mentioned by Dr. Tanner is that of Dr. Johnson of
St. Charles, Illinois, who in the hearing of Dr. Tanner, and in the
presence of a large audience in Harrison’s Hall, Minneapolis, stated
that when a young man he was prostrated with a fever. He swooned away,
apparently dead. His attending physician said he was dead. His father
was faithless and unbelieving, and refused to bury him. He lay in this
condition, apparently dead, fourteen days. The attending physician
brought other physicians to examine the apparently lifeless form, and
all stated unqualifiedly, “He is dead.” Some fourteen physicians, among
them many eminent professors, examined the body, and there was no
ambiguity in the expression of their conclusion that the boy was dead.
But the father still turned a deaf ear to all entreaties to prepare
the body for the grave. Public feeling was at last aroused. The health
officer and other city officers, acting in their official capacity, and
by the advice of physicians, peremptorily demanded that the body be
interred without delay. On the fourteenth day the father yielded under
protest; preparations were made for the funeral, when the emotions of
the still living subject, who was conscious of all transpiring around
him, were so intense as to be the means of his deliverance. He awoke
from his trance.
From the _Lancet_, June 7, 1884, p. 1058.
“IMPORTANT SUGGESTION FROM AN M.D.
“(To the Editor of the _Lancet_.)
“Sir,--Without venturing to express an opinion on the case mentioned
by the Rev. D. Williams[5] in the _Lancet_ of the 24th inst., I
would beg to say that I have no doubt in my own mind but that people
are sometimes ‘buried alive.’ An instance has come to my knowledge
where this catastrophe was only avoided by a mere accident. A lady,
about forty-five years of age, the wife of a clergyman in a northern
county, was taken ill, and after some time, as was supposed, died.
The funeral was delayed, and so was the closing of the coffin, in
consequence of the absence of a son of the lady from home. When the
boy arrived, the kissing, wailing, and commotion roused the supposed
dead woman, and brought her to consciousness in her coffin. This
lady would most probably have been buried alive were it not that the
obsequies were delayed on account of the circumstance mentioned.
“Now, may not cases more or less similar to this sometimes occur, with
the catastrophe of ‘buried alive’ added to them? But no such case
could happen if it were made compulsory that the interment of a body
should not be allowed to take place until after decomposition had set
in, as attested by a medical man.
“I am, Sir, yours truly,
“WM. O’NEILL, M.D.
“Lincoln, May 26, 1884.”
It is not always safe to conclude that persons enfeebled by age, or
exhausted by long and severe illness, and pronounced dead by the
attendant doctor, are really so. _The Undertakers’ Journal_, August 23,
1886, has the following:--
“It appears that George O. Daniels, of Clinton, Kentucky, had been ill
for several months, and at length, to all appearance, died. The body
was put in a coffin, where it remained for twenty hours, awaiting the
arrival of relatives to attend the funeral. At midnight the watchers
who surrounded the coffin were startled by a deep groan emanating from
it, and all but one, a German of the name of Wabbeking, rushed from
the room. Wabbeking remained, and as the groans continued he raised
the coffin-lid and saw that Daniels was alive. Seizing the body he
placed it upright. A few spasmodic gasps, a shudder, and the corpse
spoke. The relatives returned to find the man sitting in a chair, and
conversing with reasonable strength. Mr. Daniels claims to have been
perfectly conscious of everything which passed around him, but says he
was unable to move a muscle. He heard the sobs of his relatives when
he was pronounced dead by the doctors, and noticed the preparations
for the funeral. He is about eighty years of age.”
The same journal for July 23, 1888, reports the following under the
head of
“RETURNED TO LIFE TWICE.
[RETURNED TO LIFE TWICE.]
“The following details are given by the Cincinnati correspondent of
the _New York Herald_ from Memphis, Tennessee:--Mrs. Dicie Webb keeps
a grocery store on Beale Street, and is well known to hundreds. Two
years ago John Webb, a son of Mrs. Webb, married Sarah Kelly, a pretty
girl, to whom the mother-in-law became greatly attached. Before one
year of their married life had passed, Mrs. Webb, jun., was stricken
with consumption, and on several occasions came near dying. About a
month ago the young woman became very anxious to visit her parents in
Henderson County, and she was taken there. At first she appeared much
improved, and hopes were felt that her life might be preserved through
the summer, but two weeks ago last Tuesday a telegram announced her
death, and the husband hurried to her parents’ home. Three days later
he returned with the corpse. The mother-in-law pleaded so hard for a
sight of the dead woman, that finally, despite the belief that the
body was badly decomposed, it was decided to open the coffin. While
looking at the placid face Mrs. Webb was terrified at beholding the
eyelids of the dead woman slowly opening. The eyes did not have the
stony stare of death, nor the intelligent gleam of life. Mrs. Webb
was unable to utter a sound. She could not move, but stood gazing at
the gruesome sight. Her horror was increased when the supposed corpse
slowly sat upright and, in an almost inaudible voice, said, ‘Oh,
where am I?’ At this the weeping woman screamed. Friends who rushed
into the room were almost paralysed at the sight, and fled shrieking.
But one bolder than the others returned and spoke to the woman, who
asked to be laid on the bed. Hastily she was taken from the coffin
and cared for. In the course of the day the resurrected woman fully
regained her mental powers. The day following she related a wonderful
story. She said she was cognisant of all that occurred, and did not
lose consciousness until she was put aboard the train for Memphis.
Soon after being placed in her mother-in-law’s house she came to her
senses and knew all that was passing. While her mother-in-law was
looking at her she made a supreme effort to speak. Mrs. Webb lived a
number of days, when she again apparently died. The doctors pronounced
her dead, and she was once more placed in the coffin. While the
mother-in-law was taking her final farewell she heard a voice whisper,
‘Mother, don’t cry.’ Looking into the girl’s face, she saw the same
look that she had noticed before. She called for help, and several
women responded. Some one cried, ‘Shake her; she’s not dead.’ In the
excitement of the moment, the women, it is thought, shook the life out
of the poor consumptive, and last Saturday she was buried. The family
and friends have endeavoured to keep the matter quiet.”
The _Daily Telegraph_, January 26, 1889, reports:--
“A NARROW ESCAPE.
“A Rochester correspondent telegraphs that a woman named Girvin,
living at Burham, near Rochester, has just had a narrow escape of
being buried alive. She fell into a kind of trance, which was mistaken
for death. The coffin was ordered, and the usual preparations made for
a funeral. But while a number of the relatives were gathered at the
bedside bewailing their bereavement, the supposed corpse startled them
by suddenly rising up in bed and asking what was the matter. The woman
is making good progress towards convalescence.”
And on July 6, 1889, the same journal says:--
[A CASE AT ST. LEONARDS.]
“Our St. Leonards correspondent telegraphs:--About a week ago the wife
of a well-known tradesman in St. Leonards fell ill, and on Monday
night last the doctor gave his opinion that she could not live through
the next day. On Tuesday morning at ten o’clock the doctor pronounced
his patient dead, the nurse who was in attendance confirming the
opinion. The intimation of death naturally created great distress
among the friends of the woman, who was laid out in grave-clothes,
washed, and prepared for burial, and, being a Roman Catholic, a
crucifix was placed in her hand as she lay on her bier. When it was
announced that the woman was dying, a priest was sent for; but he
could not attend, as he was out of the town at the time.
“About a quarter to ten on Tuesday night the nurse entered the room
without a light for the purpose of getting something which she knew
where to find. Whilst in the darkened chamber she was startled to
hear a slight cry proceeding from the bed where the body lay, and
she rushed from the room in a terrible fright. The widower, hearing
the scream of fright, rushed into the chamber with a light, and was
astounded to find that his wife had raised herself up in the bed on
her elbow. She faintly uttered the words, ‘Where am I?’ and again
relapsed into a heavy sleep. The opportunity was seized of changing
the shroud for proper habiliments, and in about an hour and a half
she woke again perfectly conscious. Next morning she was told of what
had occurred, but was quite ignorant of everything that had passed,
thinking she had only had a long sleep. She is now doing well, and it
is hoped she will soon be restored to health and strength. The doctor
describes the case as the most remarkable he has ever met with in his
experience.”
Dr. Frederick A. Floyer, of Mortimer, Berks, published the
following-case in the _Tocsin_, November 1, 1889, vol. i., p. 84, under
the head of “Premature Burial”:--
“A narrow escape of this was recently communicated direct to the
writer, and as it has some extremely important bearings on the value
of what are usually considered to be evidences of death, we give it as
told by the survivor, who is still alive in the form of a cheery and
intelligent old lady in the fullest possession of her faculties and
memory.
“Herself the wife of a medical officer attached to the--th Regiment,
she was stationed at---- Island, where at the age of twenty-eight she
was safely confined. Shortly after this she was walking out with an
attendant when she was taken suddenly ill with a painful spasm of the
heart--what appears to have been an attack of angina pectoris--and was
conveyed in-doors and propped up with pillows, suffering great pain,
and although medical attendance was summoned, nothing was of avail,
and she died--at least in the opinion of those around her, who paid
the proper attention to what they regarded as a corpse. It was the
custom there to bury at sundown any one who died during the day. We
understand that in warm countries it is difficult to close the eyelids
properly, and so this lady, lying motionless and rigid, contemplated
with perfectly clear perception, but with an utter indifference, the
bringing in of the coffin and the necessary preparations for her
interment; she remembers her children coming to take a last look at
her, and then being taken down stairs.
“She would never have lived to tell the story but for an accident,
which happened in this way. Her nurse, who was much attached to her,
was stroking her face and the muscles of her jaw, and presently
declared she heard a sound of breathing. Medical assistance was
summoned, and the mirror test applied, but the surface was undimmed.
Then, to make sure, they opened a vein in each arm, but no blood
flowed. No limb responded to stimulus, and they declared that the nurse
was mistaken, and that the body was dead beyond doubt.
“But the nurse persisted in her belief and in her attentions, and did
succeed in establishing a sign of life. Then mustard applications to
her feet and to the back of her neck, and burnt feathers applied to her
nostrils, which she remembered burning her nose, completed her return
to consciousness.”
* * * * *
From the _Pall Mall Gazette_, May 11, 1891.
[CERTIFICATE OF APOPLEXY.]
“NARROW ESCAPE FROM BEING BURIED ALIVE.
“A Penn Station telegram to Dalziel says:--A singular case of
simulation of death from fright occurred here on Saturday. Mrs.
Sarseville, the wife of a farmer in this county, was in the cow-house
attending to the dairy work when she saw a nest of squirming snakes
through a hole in the plank floor. She fell to the ground apparently
lifeless with fright. Help was summoned, and she was carried into the
house. Before the physician arrived Mrs. Sarseville had begun to turn
black, and he pronounced her dead, giving a certificate, in which he
assigned apoplexy as the cause. During the night Mrs. Sarseville’s
daughter sat beside the coffin of her mother, lamenting her death.
Just before daybreak she was startled to see the body move. She was
more shocked when her mother opened her eyes and sat bolt upright in
her coffin. The supposed corpse was no less startled than the girl
to find herself dressed in grave-clothes and lying in a coffin. Help
was summoned, and the lady helped out of her narrow bed and into
her ordinary clothes. She took breakfast with the family yesterday
morning, and seemed none the worse for her ghastly experience.”
From the _British Medical Journal_, March 12, 1892, p. 577.
“A NARROW ESCAPE FROM PREMATURE BURIAL.
“The _Temps_ publishes a case of premature burial prevented by the
daughter of the supposed dead man, who, on kissing her father,
perceived that his body was not cold. The funeral _cortége_ was
on the point of starting. Suitable measures restored the man to
consciousness, and he opened his eyes and uttered one or two words.
His condition is serious, but he is alive. This incident occurred at
Vagueray, near Lyons.”
From the _Echo_, London, May 13, 1893.
“ALMOST BURIED WHILE ALIVE.
“Limoges, May 13.
“A woman has just had a narrow escape of being buried alive here. She
was subject to epileptic fits, and during one of these a few days ago
was pronounced to be dead. The arrangements for interment were made in
due course, and as the coffin was being borne into the church some of
the mourners said they heard a knocking inside. The party listened,
and distinct taps were heard. No time was lost in wrenching off the
lid of the coffin. It was then found that the woman was alive and
conscious, although terribly frightened at the awful ordeal through
which she had passed. A doctor was quickly in attendance, and under
his direction the supposed corpse was removed from the coffin and
placed on a litter for conveyance home again.”
The _Undertakers’ Journal_, July 22, 1893, says:--
“Charles Walker was supposed to have died suddenly at St. Louis a
few days ago, and a burial certificate was obtained in due course
from the coroner’s office. The body was lying in the coffin, and the
relatives took a farewell look at the features, and withdrew as the
undertaker’s assistants advanced to screw down the lid. One of the
undertaker’s men noticed, however, that the position of the body in
the coffin seemed to have undergone some slight change, and called
attention to the fact. Suddenly, without any warning, the ‘corpse’ sat
up in the coffin and gazed round the room. A physician was summoned,
restoratives were applied, and in half an hour the supposed corpse was
in a warm bed, sipping weak brandy and water, taking a lively interest
in the surroundings. Heart-failure had produced a species of syncope
resembling death that deceived even experts.”
From the _Undertakers’ Journal_, August 22, 1893.
“SNATCHED FROM DEATH AT THE GRAVESIDE.
“A marvellous case of suspended animation is described from the
British colony of Lagos, where an old woman named Oseni came to
life when she was at the cemetery about to be buried. The mourners
had assembled at the cemetery, and, in accordance with the Mahomedan
rule, the body was lifted from the coffin to be buried, when several
distinct coughs were given by the supposed corpse. She was at once
released from the clothes which bound her, and the old woman, to the
surprise and amazement of those present, sat upright and opened her
eyes. Some gruel was then procured, of which she partook with evident
relish.”
From the _Daily Telegraph_, London, December 12, 1893.
[FOUR DAYS’ APPARENT DEATH.]
“A LADY NEARLY BURIED ALIVE.
“Berlin, December 11.
“From Militsch, in Silesia, an extraordinary case of trance is
reported. It seems that, owing to the grave not being in readiness,
some delay occurred in the burial of a lady, the wife of a major in
the army, who to all appearance had died. On the fourth day after
the lady’s supposed death the maid was placing fresh flowers round
the coffin, when she was much startled at seeing the body move, and
finally assume an erect position. The lady had evidently been in a
state of coma during the past four days, and narrowly escaped being
buried alive.”
The _Banner of Light_, Boston, July 28, 1894, quotes the following case
of apparent sudden death from the _Boston Post_:--
“COFFINED ALIVE!
“Sprakers, a village not far from Rondout, N.Y., was treated to a
sensation Tuesday, July 10, by the supposed resurrection from the dead
of Miss Eleanor Markham, a young woman of respectability, who to all
appearance had died on Sunday, July 8.
“Miss Markham about a fortnight ago complained of heart trouble, and
was treated by Dr. Howard. She grew weaker gradually, and on Sunday
morning apparently breathed her last, to the great grief of her
relatives, by whom she was much beloved. The doctor pronounced her
dead, and furnished the usual burial certificate.
“Undertaker Jones took charge of the funeral arrangements. On account
of the warm weather it was decided that the interment should take
place Tuesday, and in the morning Miss Markham was put in the coffin.
“After her relatives had taken the last look on what they supposed was
their beloved dead, the lid of the coffin was fastened on, and the
undertaker and his assistant took it to the hearse waiting outside.
As they approached the hearse a noise was heard, and the coffin was
put down and opened in short order. Behold! there was poor Eleanor
Markham lying on her back, her face white and contorted, and her eyes
distended.
“‘My God!’ she cried, in broken accents. ‘Where am I? You are burying
me alive.’ ‘Hush! child,’ said Dr. Howard, who happened to be present.
‘You are all right. It is a mistake easily rectified.’
“The girl was then taken into the house and placed on the bed,
when she fainted. While the doctor was administering stimulating
restoratives the trappings of woe were removed, and the hearse drove
away with more cheerful rapidity than a hearse was ever driven before.
* * * * *
“‘I was conscious all the time you were making preparations to bury
me,’ she said, ‘and the horror of my situation is altogether beyond
description. I could hear everything that was going on, even a whisper
outside the door, and although I exerted all my will-power, and made
a supreme physical effort to cry out, I was powerless.... At first I
fancied the bearers would not hear me, but when I felt one end of the
coffin falling suddenly, I knew that I had been heard.’
“Miss Markham is on a fair way to recovery, and what is strange is
that the flutterings of the heart that brought on her illness are
gone.”
From the _Echo_, January 18, 1895.
“MISTAKEN FOR DEAD--A WOMAN’S AWFUL EXPERIENCE.
“An extraordinary affair is reported from Heap Bridge, Heywood.
Yesterday a woman was supposed to have died, and she was washed, laid
out, and measured for her coffin, a piece of linen being placed over
her mouth. Eight hours later, however, as two women were engaged in
the room, the supposed corpse blew the linen away, and raised herself
up in bed. The two women were terribly frightened, and in their hasty
retreat both tumbled downstairs, and are now suffering from slight
injuries, as well as shock. Some time elapsed before any one else
could be induced to enter the house, but eventually several persons
went in together, and found the woman still sitting up in bed. She
was exceedingly weak. Later, however, she succumbed, and the doctor
expressed the opinion that her death was accelerated by shock. During
the night the woman conversed with her son, who had carried her
upstairs for dead, and told him of the awful sensation she felt whilst
unable to speak during the washing and laying out of her body.”
The following letter appeared in the London _Daily Chronicle_ of
September 24, 1895:--
[A HUSBAND’S PROMISE.]
“BURIED ALIVE.
“Sir,--To your interesting correspondence on ‘Buried Alive,’ I would
add the following, which I had directly from the mouth of one who but
for the faithfulness of her husband would probably have been added to
the number. I knew her quite well. She was the daughter of a physician
in my native town, and her husband was a professor of music, and I
will tell the incident as nearly as I can remember in her own words.
She said:--‘I had in my early married life a dread of there being any
mistake made about my death, and begged my husband that, should he
survive me, he would watch my body himself, which he promised he would
do. Some time after this, I was overtaken by a most terrible attack
of fever, succeeded by entire exhaustion, and I, as my attendants
believed, died, and was accordingly laid out for burial. My good
husband was true to his promise, and he, with my sister, watched the
corpse, and in the night they perceived some indication of returning
life, and of course means were used for restoration.’
“I cannot be quite sure how many years she lived after, but she had
brought up at the time I speak of a family of four sons and one
daughter, and she lived to a good old age.--Yours truly,
“CASSANDRA M----.
“September 18.”
Speaking on the subject of premature burial the other day, a well-known
London publisher told the author that he personally knew a lady, the
daughter of a British Consul, who had been taken for dead on two
separate occasions. On the first occasion the lady had been placed in
her coffin, and the lid screwed down ready for interment. A friend who
had known the supposed deceased called to condole with the family,
and said:--“I should like to have a last look at dear L---- if you
will only permit me.” The lid was accordingly removed, and the visitor
detected, as it seemed to her, signs of life in her friend; she was
taken out of her coffin, put in a warm bath, and recovered. Some years
later the same lady fell into a cataleptic state after a fever, and
was taken for dead. Preparations had been made for the funeral in
both instances, but delayed beyond the usual time for interment. She
returned to consciousness, and is now living.
Dr. Moore Russell Fletcher in “Suspended Animation and the Danger of
Burying Alive,” p. 62, writes:--
“‘Seven hours in a coffin added ten years to my life,’ was the remark
of Martin Strong, of Twelfth Street, Philadelphia, some time after
quitting the coffin in which his family had placed him for burial,
after Dr. Cummings had given a certificate of his death. Frank Stoop,
of Clarinda, Iowa, was laid out for burial not long since, a physician
having certified to his death; but fortunately he awoke from his state
of coma in time to save his life.”
AN ARMY SURGEON’S PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
[DR. CHEW’S EXPERIENCES.]
Dr. R. G. S. Chew, of Calcutta, writing to the author, says:--“In
1873 I was a student in the Bishop’s High School, Poonah (Bombay
Presidency), where I used to be generally at the head of my class,
and when competing for the Science Prizes I was fully determined to
take the first prize or none. The Reverend---- Watson, Rector of St.
Mary’s Church and Chaplain to our school, knew my disposition, and
cautioned me against being too sanguine, lest disappointment might
tell very keenly. The disappointment came, and with it much nervous
excitability. Shortly after this (Christmas, 1873) my favourite sister
was seized with convulsions that carried her off. From the moment of
her decease to nearly a month after her interment I entirely lost the
power of speech. On the day of the funeral I was parched with thirst,
but could not drink, as the water seemed to choke me. My eyes were
burning and my head felt like bursting, but I could neither sob nor
cry. I felt quite dazed, and followed the procession to the cemetery,
where I stood motionless by the open grave; but as soon as they lowered
the little coffin into its resting-place I threw myself headlong into
the grave and fainted away. Some one pulled me out and carried me
home, where I lay in a sort of stupor for nine days, during which Dr.
Donaldson attended me most patiently, and I regained consciousness,
but was too weak to even sit up in bed. On the 16th January, 1874, I
felt a peculiar sensation as of something filling up my throat--no
swelling, no pain nor anything that pointed to throat affection--and
this getting worse and worse, in spite of everything, I _died_, as was
supposed, on the 18th of January, 1874, and was laid out for burial,
as the most careful examination failed to show the slightest traces of
life. I had been in this state for twenty hours, and in another three
hours would have been closed up for ever, when my eldest sister, who
was leaning over the head of my coffin crying over me, declared she
saw my lips move. The friends who had come to take their last look at
me tried to persuade her it was only fancy, but, as she persisted,
Dr. Donaldson was sent for to convince her that I was really dead.
For some unexplained reason he had me taken out of the coffin and
examined very carefully from head to foot. Noticing a peculiar, soft
fluctuating swelling at the base of my neck, just where the clavicles
meet the sternum, he went to his brougham, came back with his case of
instruments, and, before any one could stop him or ask what he was
going to do, laid open the tumour and plunged in a tracheotomy tube,
when a quantity of pus escaped, and, releasing the pressure on the
carotids and thyroid, was followed by a rush of blood and some movement
on my part that startled the doctor. Restoratives were used, and I was
slowly nursed back to life; but the tracheotomy tube (I _still_ carry
the scar) was not finally removed till September, 1875.”
“APPARENT DEATH FROM A FALL.
(_Communicated to the author by Dr. Chew._)
[APPARENT DEATH FROM A FALL.]
“A sowar--_i.e._, native trooper--of the 7th regiment of cavalry, in
1878, carrying despatches at Nowshera, was thrown from his horse,
and, falling with his head against a sharp stone in the road, rolled
on to his back, in which position he was found some six or seven
hours after, and conveyed to the morgue of the European Depôt Hospital
pending removal to the ‘lines’ of his own corps. There was very
little hæmorrhage, and the stone was still wedged in between the
temporo-parietal suture. Cardiac sounds and respiratory murmurs could
not be detected. The limbs were perfectly rigid, and there was a good
deal of cadaveric ecchymosis to be distinctly seen. Nothing would have
convinced any one that the sowar was still alive, and Surgeons-Major
Hunter, Gibson, and Briggs, Apothecary S. Pollock, Assistant-Surgeon
J. Lewis and myself _verily_ believed he was stone-dead. As ‘cause of
death’ is what the army is exceedingly particular about, Surgeon-Major
Hunter removed the impacted stone and lifted out portions of the
fractured bone (prior to holding a proper _post-mortem_), when to the
surprise of all of us ‘the corpse’ deliberately closed its eyes (which
were staring open when the body was first brought in), and there was
a slight serous hæmorrhage. On noticing this, the sowar’s head was
trephined--no chloroform or other anæsthetic being used--some more
fragments of bone and a large blood-clot that pressed on the brain were
removed, and as the sowar repeatedly flinched under this operation,
a stimulant was poured down his throat, and he was removed to his
regimental hospital, from which he was discharged ‘well’ some six
months and a half later. After this he did good service in the Afghan
and Egyptian campaigns.”
“APPARENT DEATH FROM CHOLERA.
“The cases of collapse and apparent death during epidemics of cholera
are very numerous, as will be seen by reference to medical literature.
We have now before us particulars of cases from the _Calcutta Journal
of Medicine_ for 1869, vol. ii., p. 383, where Dr. Charles Londe, of
Paris, observes that patients pronounced dead of cholera have been
repeatedly seen to move. See also, for Italy, _Lancet_, 1884, vol. ii.,
p. 655.
“A correspondent, signing himself T.E.N., in _To-Day_, October 12,
1895, says:--‘When acting as special correspondent to the _Evening
Herald_ in Hamburg during the cholera plague, I met a gentleman who
had been passed for dead and placed in the mortuary to await burial.
When the porters entered some hours later to remove the hundred or so
bodies, they found this gentleman sitting up in great pain, and very
much frightened. He was placed in a ward and recovered. About the same
time a little girl came to life actually at the graveside. She had been
brought in one of several four-horse vans that conveyed bodies for
interment in the Ohlsdorff grave-yard. Fortunately for her, she had
not been placed in a coffin, the exigencies of the time rendering it
impossible to provide caskets for the dead. When the disease began to
die out, the people found time to ask--“Can it be possible that life
remains in any of the bodies buried?” That the doctors in the latter
days cut the ulnar arteries of all subjects before passing them for
dead is full of significance.’”
[CASES COMMUNICATED BY DR. CHEW.]
The three following cases were communicated to the author, during
his sojourn in Calcutta, by Dr. Chew, in the early part of this year
(1896):--
“In March, 1877, Assistant-Surgeons H. A. Borthwick, S. Blake, H. B.
Rogers, and myself received orders to proceed from Rawal Pindi by
bullock-train to Peshawur to join the various regiments we were to
be posted to for duty. We had just passed a place called Rati when
Borthwick showed strong symptoms of cholera, from which he suffered
all that night. The nearest hospital was twenty-five miles behind us,
and though we had neither medicines nor sick-room comforts with us, we
had no alternative but to journey onwards, because the train-drivers
(Indians) refused to turn back, and if we did return to Rawal Pindi we
would have been court-martialled for disobeying lawful commands and
coming back without orders to do so. Travelling by bullock-train is
very slow work, and far from a comfortable mode of transit; however,
we were obliged to make the best of it, and early next morning
Borthwick was cold, stiff, and seemingly dead. Here was a fine state
of affairs--the nearest cantonment, which we had no expectation of
reaching (_i.e._, Nowshera) before nine p.m., was thirty-six miles
off, and by the time we arrived at it, it would have been too late to
approach the authorities, while Peshawur, our destination, was another
twenty-nine miles further off. Dispose of the body we dared not, and we
had no choice but to continue our route. All that day there was not a
movement or other sign to show that life was not extinct, and affairs
seemed no better by five p.m. next day, when we reached Peshawur. The
apparent corpse was lifted out of the bullock-train and carried into
the hospital dispensary (where a strong fire was blazing) preparatory
to papers being signed and arrangements made for its final disposal.
Whether it was the heat of the fire before which he was placed, or
whether the vibriones had produced an antitoxin, I am not prepared to
argue; but _we do know_ that Borthwick recovered consciousness while
lying on the bed in that dispensary, and that he whom we mourned as
dead returned to life. He served in the same military stations with me
in the North-West Frontier till 1880, when he accompanied me to the
Calcutta Medical College, where we parted company in February, 1882,
I bound for Egypt and he for frontier duty. At first we corresponded
regularly, but since 1885 we lost touch of each other.”
“REVIVAL IN A MORTUARY IN INDIA.
“Sergeant J. Clements Twining, of H.M.’s 109th regiment of British
infantry, located at Dinapoor in 1876, was brought in an unconscious
state to the hospital, supposed to be suffering from _coup de soleil_.
Everything that could be done was ineffectually tried to rouse him from
coma, and he was removed to the dead-house to wait _post-mortem_ next
morning. At two a.m. the sentry on the dead-house came rushing down
to the dispensary (about four hundred and fifty yards off) declaring
that he had seen and heard a ghost in the dead-house, to which myself
and the compounder and dresser on duty at once proceeded, to find that
Clements Twining, who was now partially conscious, was lying on the
dead-house flags groaning most piteously--he had rolled off the table
on to the floor. He returned to health, and in 1877 accompanied his
regiment to England, where I met him at Woolwich in 1883, and he asked
me to corroborate his story of ‘returning to life’ to certain of his
acquaintances who had refused to believe him.”
[THE USE OF MORTUARIES.]
“CHOLERA CORPSES REVIVED IN A MORTUARY.
“When the East Norfolk regiment was out cholera-dodging in 1878,
Colour-Sergeant T. Hall and Corporal W. Bellomy were sent into
cantonments for burial as cholera corpses in the Nowshera Cemetery.
There was some delay in the interment owing to a difficulty in
obtaining the wood necessary for their coffins, so both bodies
were placed in the dead-house, which was generously sprinkled with
disinfectants to ward off the risk of contagion. First Hall and then
Bellomy regained consciousness, and were duly returned to duty. The
following year Bellomy was ‘invalided’ to England, where I understand
he now enjoys the best of health.”
“Shortly after the Afghan war of 1878, Surgeon-Major T. Barnwell and
I were told off to take a large number of time-expired men, invalids,
and wounded, to Deolali on their way to England. Some of the wounded
were in a very critical state, necessitating great care; one man
in particular, Trooper Holmes of the 10th Hussars, who had an ugly
bullet-wound running along his left thigh and under the groin. Our only
means of transport for these poor fellows was the ‘palki’ or doolie
carried by four bearers at a curious swinging pace. When we got to
Nowshera, Holmes seemed on a fair way to recovery, but the swinging
of the doolie seemed too much for him, and he grew weaker day by day
till we got to Hassan Abdool, when we could not rouse him to take
some nourishment before starting on the march, and to all appearance
he seemed perfectly dead; but, as there was neither the time nor
convenience to hold a _post-mortem_, we carried the body on to ‘John
Nicholson,’ where, the same difficulties being in the way, and no
facilities for burial, we were obliged to put the _post-mortem_ off for
another day, and convey the corpse to Rawal Pindi rest camp, where we
laid him on the floor of the mortuary tent and covered him over with a
tarpaulin. This was his salvation, as next morning (_i.e._, the third
day succeeding his ‘death’), when we raised the tarpaulin to hold the
_post-mortem_, some hundreds of field mice (these tracts are _noted_
for them) rushed out, and we noticed that Holmes was breathing, though
very slowly--five or six respirations to the minute--and there were a
few teeth marks where the mice had attacked his calves. To prevent a
relapse by the jolting on further marches, we handed him over to the
station hospital staff, who pulled him round, and then forwarded him to
the headquarters of his regiment at Meerut.”
A lady, distinguished alike for her literary gifts as well as for her
philanthropy, sends me the following:--
“I am much obliged to you for sending me ‘Perils.’ It is a terrible
subject, and one that has haunted me all my life, insomuch that I have
never made a will without inserting a clause requiring my throat to be
cut before I am put underground. Of course one can have no reliance
on doctors whatever, and I have myself known a case in which a very
eminent one insisted on a coffin being screwed down because the corpse
looked so life-like and full of colour that the friends could not help
indulging in hopes.
[CASES IN IRELAND.]
“My great grandmother, after whom I am called, a famous heiress, was
a notable case of narrow escape. As a girl she passed into a state of
apparent death, and a great funeral was ordered for her. Among the
guests came a young girl friend, who insisted that she was not dead,
and raised such a stir that the funeral was postponed, and time was
allowed to pass till the marvel became that there were no signs of
change. I could never ascertain how long this comatose state lasted
before she recovered; but she _did_ recover, so thoroughly that after
her marriage with Richard Trench, of Garbuly, she became the mother
of twenty-two children. Obviously this was no case of a feeble,
hysterical, cataleptic subject. I will enclose photograph taken from a
miniature of her in a ring in my possession.
“There was another case, well known in Ireland in my youth, of a
Colonel Howard, who had a fine place (I think it was called Castle
Howard) in Wicklow. He was supposed to be dead, and a lead coffin
was actually made with his name and date of death on it; after which
Colonel Howard came to life, and had the plate of the coffin fixed over
his kitchen chimney as a warning to his servants not to bury people in
a hurry.”
Dr. Colin S. Valentine, LL.D., Principal of the Medical Missionary
Training College, Agra, N.W.P., told the author during his visit to
Agra, February, 1896, that Captain Young, an officer in the regiment of
which he (Dr. Valentine) was at that time army surgeon, who had been
dreadfully mauled while tiger-hunting in Madras, was laid out for dead,
and all the arrangements were made for his funeral at six o’clock that
evening, when consciousness returned, and he lived for twenty years
after.
In a lecture on “Signs of Death and Disposal of the Dead,” delivered by
Dr. A. Stephenson at Nottingham, January 9, 1896, the lecturer said “he
once attended a girl living in that locality who was in a trance. All
the preparations were made for her funeral, and the grave ordered. She
remained in a trance three days, and her mother was annoyed because he
would not sign her death-certificate. On the third day she slowly rose
and recovered. The girl would have been buried unless he had had a very
great fear of her being buried alive.”[6]
From the London _Echo_, March 3, 1896.
“NARROW ESCAPE OF A GREEK-ORTHODOX METROPOLITAN.
“A letter from Constantinople, in the _Politische Korrespondenz_,
gives a remarkable case of an apparent death which would have ended
in a premature burial but for the high ecclesiastical position of the
person concerned. On the 3rd of this month, Nicephorus Glycas, the
Greek-Orthodox Metropolitan of Lesbos, an old man in his eightieth
year, after several days of confinement to his bed, was reported by
the physician to be dead. The supposed dead bishop, in accordance
with the rules of the Orthodox Church, was immediately clothed in
his episcopal vestments, and placed upon the Metropolitan’s throne
in the great church of Methymni, where the body was exposed to the
devout faithful during the day, and watched by relays of priests day
and night. Crowds streamed into the church to take a last look at
their venerable chief pastor. On the second night of “the exposition
of the corpse,” the Metropolitan suddenly started up from his seat
and stared round him with amazement and horror at all the panoply
of death amidst which he had been seated. The priests were not less
horrified when the ‘dead’ bishop demanded what they were doing with
him? The old man had simply fallen into a death-like lethargy, which
the incompetent doctors had hastily concluded to be death. He is now
as hale and hearty as can well be expected from an octogenarian. But
here it is that the moral comes in. If Nicephorus Glycas had been a
layman he would most certainly have been buried alive. Fortunately for
him the Canon Law of the Orthodox Church does not allow a bishop to be
buried earlier than the third day after his death; whereas a layman,
according to the ancient Eastern custom, is generally buried about
twelve hours after death has been certified. The excitement which has
been aroused by the prelate’s startling resurrection may tend to set
men thinking more seriously about the frequent probability of the
cruel horror of the interment of living persons.”
The above-mentioned facts have been authenticated for the author by Dr.
Franz Hartmann, of Hallein, Austria.
NARROW ESCAPES OF SMALL-POX PATIENTS.
Many physicians who dispute the frequency of premature burials admit
that the liability to such catastrophes is considerable during
epidemics of small-pox, where extreme exhaustion, amounting to a
suspension of life, is distinguishable from actual death only by
patient and prolonged observation.
From the _Lancet_, June 21, 1884, p. 1150:--
“SUSPENDED ANIMATION AFTER SMALL-POX.
“Sir,--I send you privately names and addresses by means of which you
can test, if you please, the accuracy of the following statements,
which I forward for insertion in your journal:--
[APPARENT DEATHS AFTER SMALL-POX.]
“Some years since, a young man who had been attacked by small-pox
was declared by the medical man to be dead, and was laid out for
burial. The nurse, however, on paying a visit to the supposed corpse,
thinking there was something uncorpse-like about its appearance, put
a wine-glass over the mouth, and returning in a quarter of an hour,
found it dimmed with breath. He was resuscitated, and, so far as I
am aware, is still living. He would now be about forty-five. He is a
farmer.
“A mother and her baby were ill of small-pox, and seemed likely to
die. The grandmother, however, made the nurse promise that if death
appeared to ensue, and even if the medical man pronounced either or
both to be dead, she would put additional blankets on the one or
both, and leave them so till her (the grandmother’s) return, which
would not be till the next day. They both appeared to die, and were
declared dead by the doctor; but the nurse did as she had promised,
and the next day when the grandmother returned, they were both alive,
and were both living not very long since.
“Some twenty years ago, I was told that about forty years previously
a young man, in a parish where I was acquainted, was put in a coffin
as a person dead of small-pox; but when the bell was tolling for his
funeral, and he was about to be ‘screwed down,’ he got up and vacated
the coffin, and lived several years afterwards.
“In a town where I was brought up, a woman was nearly buried alive
through having gone into a trance on being frightened by a young lady
who had put on a white sheet and pretended to be a ‘ghost.’ For years
she was liable to long spells of insensibility, from which nothing
could rouse her.
“The haste with which small-pox corpses are disposed of nowadays is to
be deprecated. They are usually buried within twelve hours of their
supposed death, and the cases I first mentioned show with what very
probable results. The only sure proof of death is decomposition, and
a law ought to be passed forbidding burial until signs of it have
appeared. Not very long since I was in a church-yard where a drain
was being made round the church, and was not a little struck by the
horrified look of a labourer who came to the vicar and stated that
they had come on a skull face downward, which, he said, put it beyond
doubt that the person it had belonged to had turned in his coffin
after burial.--I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
“B. A.
“June 18, 1884.”
The _Undertakers’ Journal_, May 22, 1895, has the following:--
[REV. HARRY JONES’ CASES.]
“The Reverend Harry Jones, in his reminiscences, and as a London
clergyman, declares his conviction that in times of panic from fatal
epidemics it is not unlikely that some people are buried alive.
Mr. Jones recalls a case within his knowledge of a young woman
pronounced to be dead from cholera, and actually laid out for the
usual collecting cart to call from the undertakers, when a neighbour
happened to come in and lament over her. The story continues thus:
‘And is poor Sarah really dead?’ she cried. ‘Well,’ said her mother,
‘she is, and she will soon be fetched away; but if you can do anything
you may do it.’ Acting on this permission the practical neighbour set
about rubbing Sarah profusely with mustard. Sarah sat up, stung into
renovated life, and so far recovered as to marry; ‘and I myself,’ says
Mr. Jones, ‘christened four or five of her children in the course of
the next few years.’ In another case, within Mr. Jones’ parochial
experiences in London, a man employed as potman lay _in extremis_. A
doctor was called in, who said ‘Turn him on his face, and I will put
a thick strip of flannel soaked in spirits of wine down his spine. We
will see what that will do.’ A sister brought a store of flannel, the
doctor soaked it in spirit, and prepared to apply it as he proposed.
First, however, he placed the soaking mass in a heap (almost as big as
a small hassock) in the middle of his back. Meanwhile the sister leant
forward with a candle and accidently set the hassock on fire. ‘This,’
adds the anecdotist, ‘woke the potman up;’ and not very long ago the
doctor told me he had seen him in a street near the Oxford Circus.”
From the _Daily Chronicle_, September 19, 1895.
“Sir,--I infer from the following facts that numbers of persons are
buried alive after being supposed to have succumbed to small-pox.
“Some years ago, at St. Paul’s, Belchamp, near Clare, a young man who
had been down with the small-pox was pronounced to be dead, and was
put into a coffin, which, fortunately, was left unclosed until after
the bell began to toll for his funeral, when he rose and stepped out.
He lived for many years after. In the same neighbourhood no less
than three other similar cases occurred, saving that the undertakers
were not so far forward in their work. Each of these would have been
buried alive but for the facts that in one case the nurse, having
suspicions, put a wine-glass over the mouth of the person (who had
been already ‘laid out’), and on returning in a quarter of an hour
found it dimmed with breath; and that in the other case the mother
of a mother, who with her baby was declared by the doctor to be dead,
had blankets heaped on them, and after a while had the satisfaction of
seeing them revive. Two of these three persons are, I believe, still
living, and would be just past middle-age. I enclose their names for
your private perusal, that you may verify my statements if desired.
The first-mentioned case happened about seventy years ago, but I heard
of it from residents in the neighbourhood about forty years after it
occurred.
“Nowadays as soon as a small-pox patient is supposed to be dead, he
or she is enclosed in a coffin and hurried off to the church-yard or
cemetery the ensuing night--at least this is the practice in country
places. I have no doubt that many have been buried alive.--Yours
faithfully,
“EX-CURATE.
“September 18.”
Brigade-Surgeon W. Curran cites from the _Revue des Deux Mondes_,
April, 1873, in his Eighth Paper, entitled “Buried Alive,” as follows:--
[IMPORTANCE OF CAREFUL EXAMINATION.]
“On the 15th of October, 1842, a farmer who lived in the suburbs of
Neufchâtel (Lower Seine) went to sleep in his hay-loft in the midst of
some newly mown hay. As he did not get up at the usual hour the next
morning, his wife went to call him, and found him dead. When the time
for his funeral arrived, some twenty-four or thirty hours subsequently,
those who were charged with the burial put the body on a bier, and
having placed this on the ladder that communicated between the ground
and the loft, they allowed it to slide down. All of a sudden one of
the rungs of this ladder gave way, and the bier, falling through, was
dashed violently on the pavement below. The shock, which might have
been fatal to a live person, proved to be the ‘saving clause’ of our
supposed dead one; and fortunately, too, the attendants had not, as
so commonly happens in such contingencies, absconded; on the contrary,
responding without delay to the requirements of the situation, they
quickly realised the gravity of the crisis, and, unbinding the shrouds
of the farmer, they soon restored him to consciousness and life. He was
able, we are further told, to resume his ordinary duties in a few days
afterwards.”[7]
The _Undertakers’ and Funeral Directors’ Journal_, January 22, 1889,
says:--
“Mr. J. W. Smith, of 158 River Avenue, Alleghany” has just had, for
instance, a remarkably narrow escape of prematurely putting his family
in mourning, and one which will, we may be sure, be a very disagreeable
recollection for him during the rest of his existence. After a visit to
the Pittsburg Opera House one night, Mr. Smith was found lying ‘stiff
and cold’ behind the stove in the dining-room, and apparently dead. A
superficial examination by Dr. M’Cready confirmed the worst fears of
Mrs. Smith, but subsequently the doctor sought carefully for any little
spark of life which might lurk unseen, and, very fortunately for Mr.
Smith, found it. But, beyond that, nothing could be accomplished; no
effort to restore animation produced the slightest effect. Two other
physicians were then summoned; but neither attempts at bleeding, the
use of ‘mustard baths,’ nor the application of electricity, could
rouse Mr. Smith after his visit to the opera. For three weeks he lay
insensible, and when he regained consciousness a fever followed. This
event, and some others of a similar character which are occasionally
heard of, show that the examination of persons apparently dead should
always be undertaken by an efficient person, and by no means in a
perfunctory manner.”
The late Madame Blavatsky was subject to death-like trances, and Dr.
Franz Hartmann informs me that she would have been buried alive if
Colonel Olcott had not telegraphed to let her have time to awaken.
CHAPTER VI.
FORMALITIES AND THEIR FATAL CONSEQUENCES.
WHENEVER grave-yards have been removed, owing to the rapid expansion
of towns, in America, or examined elsewhere, unmistakable evidences of
premature burial have been disclosed, as will be seen in this volume;
bodies have been found turned upon their faces, the limbs contorted,
with hair dishevelled, the clothing torn, the flesh mutilated, and
coffins broken by the inmates in their mad endeavour to escape after
returning consciousness, to terminate life only in unspeakable mental
and physical agonies. It may be said that every grave-yard has its
traditions, but the facts are carefully concealed lest they should
reach the ears of the relatives, or incriminate the doctors who had
with such confidence certified to actual deaths which were only
apparent. It is not, however, the custom to remove grave-yards in
Europe until all possibility of such discoveries has disappeared.
To reopen a grave is to break the seal of domestic grief. There
is a widespread belief that where a coffin, with a duly certified
corpse,--dead or alive,--has been screwed up, it must not be opened
without an authorisation from a magistrate, mayor, or other official,
and many people have been suffocated in their coffins while waiting
for this formality. Common sense, under the circumstances, seems to be
often paralysed.
In England it has been decided, Reg. _v._ Sharpe (1 Dearsley and Bell,
160), to be a misdemeanour to disinter a body without lawful authority,
even where the motive of the offender was pious and laudable; and a
too rigorous interpretation of this and similar enactments in other
countries has led to the suffocation of many unfortunate victims of a
mistaken medical diagnosis, whose lives, by prompt interposition, might
have been saved.
Köppen, in his work, entitled “Information Relative to Persons who have
been Buried Alive,” Halle, 1799, dedicated to His Majesty the King of
Prussia, Frederick William III., quotes the following amongst a large
number of cases of premature burial:--“In D----, the Baroness F----
died of small-pox. She was kept in her house three days, and then put
in the family vault. After a time, a noise of knocking was heard in the
vault, and the voice of the Baroness was also heard. The authorities
were informed; and instead of opening the door with an axe, as could
have been done, the key was sent for, which took three or four hours
before the messenger returned with it. On opening the vault it was
found that the lady was lying on her side, with evidences of having
suffered terrible agony.”
[A MAGISTRATE CENSURED.]
Struve, in his essay on “Suspended Animation,” 1803, p. 71, relates
the following:--“A beggar arrived late at night, and almost frozen
to death, at a German village, and, observing a school-house open,
resolved to sleep there. The next morning, the school-boys found the
poor man sitting motionless in the room, and hastened, affrighted,
to inform the schoolmaster of what they had seen. The villagers,
supposing the beggar to be dead, interred him in the evening. During
the night, the watchman heard a knocking in the grave, accompanied by
lamentations. He gave information to the bailiff of the village, who
declined to listen to his tale. Soon afterwards the watchman returned
to the grave, and again heard a hollow noise, interrupted by sighs.
He once more hastened to the magistrate, earnestly soliciting him to
cause the grave to be opened; but the latter, being irresolute, delayed
this measure till the next morning, when he applied to the sheriff, who
lived at a distance from the village, in order to obtain the necessary
directions. He was, however, obliged to wait some time before an
interview took place. The more judicious sheriff severely censured the
magistrate for not having opened the grave on the information from the
watchman, and desired him to return and cause it to be opened without
delay. On his arrival, the grave was immediately opened; but, just
Heaven! what a sight! The poor, wretched man, after having recovered in
the grave, had expired for want of air. In his anguish and desperation
he had torn the flesh from his arms. All the spectators were struck
with horror at this dreadful scene.”
The _Undertakers’ Journal_, November 22, 1880, relates the following:--
“An extraordinary story is reported from Tredegar, South Wales. A
man was buried at Cefn Golan Cemetery, and it is alleged that some
of those who took part in carrying the body to the burial-ground
heard knocking inside the coffin. No notice was taken of the affair
at the time, but it has now come up again, and the rumour has caused
a painful sensation throughout the district. It is stated that
application has been made to the Home Secretary for permission to
exhume the body.”
Dr. Franz Hartmann, in his “Premature Burial,” pp. 10 and 44, relates
the two following cases:--“In the year 1856 a man died in an Hungarian
village. It is customary there to dig the graves in rows. As the
grave-digger was making the new grave he heard sounds as of knocking
proceeding from a grave where a man had been buried a few days
previously. Terrified, he went to the priest, and with the priest to
the police. At last permission was granted to open the grave; but by
that time its occupant had died in reality. The fact that he had been
buried alive was made evident by the condition of the body, and by the
wounds which the man had inflicted upon himself by biting his shoulders
and arms.
“In a small town in Prussia, an undertaker, living within the limits
of the cemetery, heard during the night cries proceeding from within a
grave in which a person had been buried on the previous day. Not daring
to interfere without permission, he went to the police and reported the
matter. When, after a great deal of delay, the required formalities
were fulfilled and permission granted to open the grave, it was found
that the man had been buried alive, but that he was now dead. His
body, which had been cold at the time of the funeral, was now warm and
bleeding from many wounds, where he had skinned his hands and head in
his struggles to free himself before suffocation made an end to his
misery.”
A medical correspondent communicates to the author particulars of the
following case, which occurred at Salzburg, Austria:--“Some children
were playing in the Luzergasse Cemetery, and their attention was
attracted by knocking sounds in a newly-made grave. They informed the
grave-digger of it, and he secured permission to open the grave from
whence the sounds seemed to come. A man had been buried there at two
p.m. that day. The formalities of the permission to open the grave
delayed it till seven p.m., when, on opening the coffin, the body
was found to be bent completely over forwards, and was frightfully
distorted and bleeding from places on the hands and arms, which seemed
to have been gnawed by the man’s own teeth. The medical experts who
were called in to examine the case declared that the man had been
buried alive.”
From the _Undertakers’ and Funeral Directors’ Journal_, January 22,
1887.
[FATAL RESULTS.]
“Another shocking case of premature burial is reported; the distressing
incident took place at Saumur, in France. A young man suddenly died, at
least to all appearance, and his burial was ordered to take place as
soon as possible. The _croquemorts_, or undertaker’s men, who carried
the coffin to the grave, thought they heard a noise like knocking under
its lid, yet, being afraid of creating a panic among the people who
attended the funeral, they went on with their burden. The coffin was
duly placed in the grave, but, as the earth was being thrown upon it,
unmistakable sounds of knocking were heard by everybody. The mayor,
however, had to be sent for before the coffin could be opened, and
some delay occurred in the arrival of that official. When the lid was
removed, the horrible discovery was made that the unfortunate inmate
had only just died from asphyxia. The conviction is spreading that the
terrible French law requiring speedy interment ought to be modified
without delay.”
Mr. William Harbutt, School of Art, Bath, writes to me, November 27,
1895:--“The copies of the pamphlet ‘The Perils of Premature Burial,’
by Professor Alex. Wilder, you kindly sent me are in circulation.
Almost every one to whom I mention the subject knows some instances.
One, a case at Radstock, twelve miles from Bath, where the bearers at
the funeral heard noises inside the coffin, but were afraid to open it
without the authority from a magistrate. When it was opened next day
the appearance of the body showed that he had been coffined alive, and
had had a terrible struggle to escape.”
From the _Star_, London, May 13, 1895.
“A WOMAN LOSES HER LIFE THROUGH LEGAL FORMALITIES.
“Paris, May 11.
“A woman who was believed to have died the day before was being buried
at Doussard, when the grave-digger, who was engaged in filling up the
grave, distinctly heard knocking coming from the coffin. He called
a man who was working near, and he came and listened, and heard the
knocking also. It was then about nine o’clock in the morning. The
knocking continued, and they listened for about half an hour, when it
occurred to one of them that they ought to do something, so they went
to inform the local authorities. The curé of the village was the first
to arrive on the scene; but as no one had any authority to exhume the
body the coffin was not taken up. All that was done was to bore some
holes in the lid with a drill in such a way as to admit of air. By
mid-day all the necessary formalities had been gone through, and it
was decided at last to open the coffin. This was done; but whether
the unfortunate woman was still alive at this time is doubtful. Some
of those present affirm that she was. They state that they saw a
little colour come into her cheeks, and the eyes open and shut. One
thing is certain--viz.: that when at half-past six in the evening it
was finally decided to consult a doctor, the practitioner summoned
declared that death had taken place not more than five or six hours
before. It was thought that had the coffin been opened directly the
sounds were heard the woman’s life might have been saved, and she
would have been spared hours of indescribable torture and suffering.”
The Paris edition of the _New York Herald_, May 14, 1895, says:--
“The case of the woman buried alive at Annecy, in the Haute-Savoie,
the other day, has almost found a pendant at Limoges. A woman,
belonging to the village of Laterie, died, to all appearance at least,
a few days ago. After the body had been placed in a coffin, it was
transported to the village church. On the way the bearers heard sounds
proceeding from it, and at once sent for the mayor, who ordered it to
be opened. The woman was found to be suffering from _eclampsia_, which
had been mistaken for death by her relatives.”
The following case is instructive in that the victim was exhumed
without an order from the Home Secretary, or waiting for any
formalities, and was restored to life:--
“BURYING ALIVE.
[From the _Spectator_, October 19, 1895.]
[RESUSCITATION IN IRELAND.]
“Sir,--_Apropos_ of your article and the correspondence about being
buried alive, in the _Spectator_ of September 28, the enclosed may
interest you. It is an extract which I have copied to-day out of a
letter to a neighbour of mine from his brother in Ireland, dated
October 6, 1895:--‘About three weeks ago, our kitchen-maid asked leave
to go away for two or three days to see her mother, who was dying.
She came back again on a Friday or Saturday, saying her mother was
dead and buried. On Wednesday she got a letter saying her mother had
been dug up, and was alive and getting all right. So she went up to
see her, and sure enough there she was “right enough,” as G---- says,
having got out of her trance, and knowing nothing about being in her
grave from Saturday till Tuesday. The only thing she missed was her
_rings_; she could not make out where they had got to. Her daughter,
it seems, told the doctor on her way back here that it struck her that
her mother had never got stiff after death, and she could not help
thinking it was very odd; and it made her very uncomfortable. He
never said a word: and the kitchen-maid heard nothing until she got
the letter saying her mother was back again and alive. Luckily, she
did not “come to” until she had been taken out of her coffin. It was
a “rum go” altogether. They say exactly the same thing happened to a
sister of hers who is now alive and well.’--I am, Sir, etc.,
“PEVERIL TURNBULL.”
CHAPTER VII.
PROBABLE CASES OF PREMATURE BURIAL.
THERE is a great and natural reluctance on the part of medical
practitioners to admit that they have made mistakes in
death-certification, particularly in any one of the various forms
of death counterfeits, or suspended animation. It should be noted
that amongst the lectures delivered on special occasions, such as
the opening of the medical schools, the subjects of trance and the
danger of premature burial are conspicuous for their absence; allusion
to these subjects is of rare occurrence, nor does the study of this
abstruse branch of medicine, so far as can be ascertained, form part
of any medical curriculum. In the bibliography at the end of this
volume, extensive as it is, I can hardly refer to a single instance.
Dr. Franz Hartmann, whose work on “Buried Alive” has passed through two
English and one German edition, informs me that the same reticence is
observable in the medical schools of Germany. Many medical men do not
believe in death-trance. They declare that they have never seen such a
case, and in their judgment when a sick patient ceases to breathe, when
volition is suspended, and the stethoscope reveals no signs of cardiac
action, the death is real, and the case beyond recovery. The evidence
disclosed in this volume is the result of inquiry in many countries.
From the _Medical Times_, London, 1860, vol. i., p. 65.
“A lady entering upon the ninth month of pregnancy died of pneumonia.
All the other phenomena of death ensued, except that the colour of the
face was unusually life-like. On the fifteenth day from that of death
there was not the least cadaveric odour from the corpse, nor had its
appearance much altered, and it was only on the sixteenth day that the
lips darkened. The temperature of the atmosphere had undergone many
changes during the time mentioned, but although there had been frost
for a short period, the weather was in general damp and cold.”
[NEIGHBOURS’ INTERFERENCE.]
This lady might not have been dead. The burial laws should have been
such as to make it certain that she was dead before interment, by
the appearance of general decomposition. The examination of facts
collected by well-known physicians at home leads to the conclusion that
cases of narrow escapes from premature burial are by no means of rare
occurrence. And it must be obvious to the least reflective reader that
in countries where burial follows quickly upon supposed death (as in
Turkey and France, some parts of Ireland, and throughout India), or
where there is no compulsory examination of the dead (as in the United
States or the United Kingdom), and amongst people like the Jews (since
the Jewish Law enjoins speedy interment), and especially in cases of
sudden death (where attempts at resuscitation are rare), the number of
premature burials may be considerable.
In the United States, while there is no law, as in France, enforcing
burial within a prescribed number of days, it is the custom of civil
authorities, under regulations made by the Boards of Health, to compel
interments if delayed by reason of doubt as to actual death beyond a
few days.
Particulars of the following case were sent me by a physician, January
17, 1894:--
“WAS SHE ALIVE?
“Mrs. John Emmons, of North Judson, Ind., was taken suddenly ill and
apparently died, a week ago. Her husband desired to keep the body for
a few days, to make sure of death. It seems that her mother went into
a trance for four days, rallied, and lived five years; also that her
grandfather on her mother’s side, after having been pronounced dead
for six days, awoke, and lived for twenty-three years. Mrs. Emmons’s
body was kept until Saturday, when, on the demand of the physician and
numerous residents, it was interred. During the time between Monday
and Saturday the body did not become rigid. Mortification did not set
in, and she was laid to rest without waiting for that, the surest of
all tests, to take place. Many are of the opinion that the woman has
been buried alive.”
There are many cases like the above on record, in which, although there
is no absolute proof of premature burial, there is strong presumptive
evidence of it. The following from _Truth_ (London) of May 23, 1895, is
an example, and the writer has heard of many others:--
“The other day I gave a story showing the difficulty of obtaining a
_post-mortem_ examination after a doctor has once certified the cause
of death. One of my readers caps it with a gruesome narrative, of
which this is the outline: A man lately died in London. The coffin
had to be removed by rail, and was to be closed on the fourth day
after the death. My informant, taking a last look at the deceased,
was struck by the complete absence of all the ordinary signs of death
at such a period. In particular, he states that there was no rigidity
in any part of the body, and there was a perceptible tinge of colour
in the forehead. He went over to the doctor who had attended the
deceased, described all the signs that he had observed, and begged the
doctor to come and look at the body before the coffin was closed. The
doctor absolutely refused, saying that he had given his certificate,
and had no doubt as to the man’s death. The friend then suggested that
he might himself open a vein and see if blood flowed, to which the
doctor replied that, if he did so without the authority of the widow,
he would be indictable for felony. Whereupon, says my informant, who
was only a friend of the family, ‘I had to retire baffled, and let
matters take their course.’ Why on earth he did not take the widow
into his confidence, or risk an indictment for felony by opening a
vein on his own account, or even summon another doctor, he does not
say. I trust that, should any friend of mine see my coffin about to
be screwed down under similar circumstances, and find equal cause to
doubt whether I am dead, he will summon up courage to stick a pin
into me, and chance the consequences. This, however, has nothing to
do with the doctor’s responsibilities. It would seem that the medico
in this case was either so confident in his own opinion as to decline
even to walk across the road to investigate the extraordinary symptoms
described to him, or else that he preferred the chance of the man
being buried alive to the chance of having to admit he had made a
mistake. Which alternative is the worst I do not know.”
The _Gaulois_ (Paris) of May 16, 1894, contains the following:--
“DEATH OR CATALEPSY?
“The funeral of the Comtesse de Jarnac, whose death was reported to
have taken place on Saturday, was fixed for to-morrow, but it will
probably be postponed. None of the usual signs of dissolution have
appeared; the face still retains its colour, and _rigor mortis_ has
not yet set in. Some hope is even entertained that the Comtesse may be
simply in a state of catalepsy, and that the embolus, to which death
was attributed, may have lodged in the lungs, not in the heart, in
which case it may merely have caused a stoppage of the circulation
(_sic_). The body had not been placed in the coffin up to a late hour
last night.”
[CASE IN THE AUSTRIAN TYROL.]
STRANGULATION BY A SCARF.
One of the authors was present on May 14, 1894, with a company of
ladies and gentlemen gathered at a country mansion in the Austrian
Tyrol for afternoon tea, when the conversation turned upon the subject
of premature burial. Among other cases related, the host described
that of one of his servants, a woman, who went to bed with toothache,
a long scarf being wrapped around her face and neck. As she did not
appear the following morning, our host entered her room, and found her,
as he supposed, strangled to death by the scarf tightly wound about
her neck. A doctor was summoned, when he found that the woman was warm
and limp, her face soft and coloured as in life; yet, as there was
no respiration or perceptible wrist-pulse, nor beating of the heart,
he regarded her as dead, and thought it would be proper to bury her.
The host had doubts, however, about the case, and, having decided to
observe it further, he had the woman removed to an outhouse, where she
remained three days longer without any change in her appearance or
condition in any way. But, as there was considerable impatience felt
at the delay of the burial by the people on the estate, the host sent
for two doctors to make a final examination of the woman, and decide
as to the existence of life or death. The doctors found that no change
had taken place--there was softness of the sk
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