_Death-bed Mystery._--In conversation with an aged widow,--as devout and
sensible as she is unlettered,--I yesterday learned a death-bed mystery
which appeared new to me, and which (if not more commonly known than I take
it to be) you may perhaps think worthy of a place in "NOTES AND QUERIES,"
to serve as a minor satellite to some more luminous communication, in reply
to B. H. at Vol. i., p. 315. My informant's "_religio_" (as she appears to
have derived it by tradition from her mother, and as confirmed by her own
experience in the case of a father, a {52} husband, several children, and
others), is to the effect that a considerable interval _invariably_ elapses
between the first semblance of death, and what she considers to be the
departure of the soul.
About five minutes after the time when death, to all outward appearance,
has taken place, "the last breath," as she describes, may be seen to issue
with a vapour, or "steam," out of the mouth of the departed.
The statement reminds me of Webster's argument, in his _Display of supposed
Witchcraft_, chap. xvi., where, writing of the bleeding of corpses in
presence of their murderers, he observes:
"If we physically consider the union of the soul with the body by the
mediation of the spirit, then we cannot rationally conceive that the
soul doth utterly forsake that union, until by putrefaction, tending to
an absolute mutation, it is forced to bid farewell to its beloved
tabernacle; for its not operating _ad extra_ to our senses, doth not
necessarily infer its total absence. And it may be, that there is more
in that of _Abel's blood crying unto the Lord from the ground_, in a
physical sense than is commonly conceived," &c.
Sir Kenelm Digby (I think I remember) has also made some curious remarks on
this subject, in his observations on the _Religio Medici_ of Sir T. Brown.