“Oh sleep! thou ape of death, lie dull upon her;
And be her sense but as a monument,
Thus in a chapel lying.”
CYMBELINE.
“Sleep may usurp on nature many hours.”
PERICLES.
IDA. These stories are, indeed, painfully interesting; but tell us,
Evelyn, is it so certain that the shaft of Azrael had irretrievably
struck these unhappy creatures of whom you speak? Is it not to be feared
that instances of premature sepulture have too often occurred from want
of scientific discernment? On the exhumation of the Cimetière des
Innocents at Paris, during the Napoleon dynasty, the skeletons were many
of them discovered in attitudes indicating a struggling to get free:
indeed some, we are assured, were partly out of their coffins.
To avert this awful catastrophe it was the custom, in the provinces of
Germany, to place a bell-rope in the hand of a corpse for twenty-four
hours before burial. We may look on this, perhaps, as one natural source
of _romance_ and mystery; for the ringing of bells by the dead has been
a favourite omen of the ghostly legends.
EV. Alas! even my own professional study and duties have not been free
from these melancholy scenes; and if I make not your gentle heart to
tremble, fair Castaly, I will recount some of those unhappy instances of
fatality, to which the errors and neglect of man may doom his
fellow-mortal.
Miss C—— (of C—— Hall, in Warwickshire,) and her brother were the
subjects of typhoid fever. She seemed to die, and her bier was placed in
the family vault. In a week her brother died also, and when he was taken
to the tomb, the lady was found _sitting in her grave-clothes_ on the
steps of the vault; having, after her waking from the trance, died of
terror or exhaustion.
A girl, after repeated faintings, was apparently dead, and was taken, as
a subject, into the anatomical theatre of the “Salpetrière,” at Paris.
During the night, faint groans were heard in the theatre, but no search
was made. In the morning, it was evident that the girl had _attempted to
disengage herself from the winding-sheet_, one leg being thrust from off
the trestles, and an arm resting on an adjoining table.
A slave girl of Canton, named Leaning, apparently died. She was placed
in a coffin, the lid of which remained unfastened, that her parents
might come and see the corpse. Three days after the apparent death,
while the remains were being conveyed to the grave, a noise or voice was
heard proceeding from the coffin, and on removing the covering, it was
found the woman had come to life again.
In 1838, at Tonnieus, in the Lower Garonne, as the graveman threw earth
on a coffin he also heard groans. Much terrified, he ran away, and a
crowd assembled. On opening the coffin, the face of the buried man was
distorted, and he had disengaged his arms from the folds of his winding
sheet.
The Emperor Zeno was, as it is written, prematurely buried; and, when
the body was soon after casually discovered, it was found that he had,
to satisfy acute hunger, _eaten some flesh from his arm_.
ASTR. One might think that Master Ainsworth, from this record, sketched
the episode of the sexton and the old coffin in his “Rookwood.” The
truth is equal to the fiction.
CAST. When I was at Breslau, in 1835, (and this is not one of
Astrophel’s fictions,) a nun of the Ursuline Convent was placed in her
coffin in the church. At midnight, the sisters assembled to chaunt the
vigils over the body of their sainted sister. While the holy hymn was
echoing through the oratory, the nun arose, tottered to the altar, knelt
before the cross, and prayed. The sisters with a cry of horror awoke the
abbess; and on her arrival, the nun again arose, and lay down in her
coffin. The physician of the convent was speedily summoned, but, on his
arrival, _he found her dead_.
There can scarcely be drawn a scene, combining the sublime and beautiful
of romance, in higher intensity than this. It was the spectral
visitation of a seraph.
IDA. Like many sublimities of nature, these mysteries have been profaned
by unholy imitation; as for instance, the reanimation of the nuns in the
opera of “Robert le Diable.” But there is an awful romance mingled with
the history of those melancholy creatures, from whose inanimate clay the
immortal spirit was thought to have parted, still more impressive. That
instinctive, that inexpressible dread, with which we contemplate a
corpse, is nothing in comparison with that thrill of astonishment which
overwhelms us, when a body becomes (as in the miraculous recall of
Lazarus) _reanimated_; when a spirit appears to visit us from the dead.
Yet this is not _fear_, for we know it cannot injure us; it is a feeling
that we are with something beyond ourselves spiritual, which had seemed
to have endured a transfiguration, and been admitted into the order of
angelic beings. There must be something of the supernatural which
creates this fearful wonder; an impression on the heart that is an
especial influence of the Deity. Else should we not behold with _dread_,
instead of a sacred _pleasure_, the success of our efforts in cases of
suspended animation?
This visitation from another world is one of the surest indications of
our spirituality; and like the reanimation of soul and mind, and
consciousness, from deep and undreaming sleep, lighting up the body into
brilliancy and beauty, might drown a sceptic’s reasoning in a flood of
holy faith, and overwhelm him with the belief of immortality.
CAST. It is this combination of vitality and death—so seemingly a
paradox—that forms the basis of many of our deepest romances; as the
“Spectre Life in Death,” in the Ancient Mariner, of the melancholy
Coleridge,—himself a wild visionary of the first order. If I remember,
he is writing of a spectre ship.—
——“Betwixt us and the sun.
And straight the sun was fleck’d with bars—
(Heaven’s mother send us grace!)
As if through a dungeon-grate he peer’d
With broad and burning face.
Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud,)
How fast she neers and neers.
Are those _her_ sails that glance in the sun,
Like restless gossameres?
Are those _her_ ribs, through which the sun
Doth peer, as through a grate?
And is that woman all her crew?
Is that a Death—and are there two?
Is Death that woman’s mate?
Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold,
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The night-mare Life in Death was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.”
EV. It is melancholy that a noble mind should be so perverted by
poppy-juice. And yet the Mahometan beats him hollow at this sort of
burlesque.
There is a fiction in Sale’s notes to the “Koran.” During the building
of his magnificent temple, King Solomon sleeps in death. He remains
supported by his staff, on which he had been leaning, until a worm eats
away the prop, and the body falls prostrate to the ground.
But we need not go to the East for our specimens. Even in the year 1839,
in our Emerald Isle of superstition, they would have us believe a
miracle of this kind.
In a field near Lurgan, a man, called Farland, had received money from a
widow, wherewith to pay her rent;—this he failed to do. On her
remonstrance and declaration, she was asked to name her witnesses. She
answered,—“No one but God and herself.” “Then,” rejoined the man, “your
God was asleep at the time.” The attestation of three witnesses records,
that he was instantly struck in a trance as he was resting on his spade,
and in that attitude he had ever since continued!
CAST. And is it not a blot on the page of science, that so many
ill-fated creatures are thus, through an error, doomed to dissolution?
Say, gentle Evelyn, has not your philosophy discovered some mode of
discernment between life and death, which would smile the philanthropist
on to patient watching?
EV. To a degree. But it were vain to offer here precepts for such
discrimination, which, sooth to say, are not yet absolute. The rosy tint
of complexion may remain for some time, and even perspiration may break
forth, _after death_; or the body may assume the _most deathlike_
aspect, and yet vitality is only _in abeyance_. Among our recoveries, it
is true, there are many _spontaneous_ rousings, and this especially if
deep impression has been the cause of trance.
Listen to the following, from a journal of 1834:—“The wife of Thomas
Benson, livery-lace maker, of Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields,
being suddenly taken ill, to all appearance expired; and, when every
symptom of life had fled, the body was duly laid out. On the following
night, between nine and ten o’clock, whilst the undertaker was in the
house receiving instructions for the funeral, to the astonishment and
terror of the whole family, Mrs. Benson came down stairs, having been in
a trance nearly thirty hours. Her situation has so terribly shocked her,
that but faint hopes are entertained of her recovery.”
It is melancholy to know how often these cases are abandoned _to
nature_; but science may do much, and _should do_ more, to relieve them;
although we possess not the wondrous phial of Renatus, nor have
developed the creative mysteries of Prometheus or Frankenstein.
Yet the recovery of François de Civille, was almost as great a wonder.
He was thrown, at the siege of Rouen, into insensibility. He was, in
this state, carried home by his servant. During a week he became warm,
but exhibited no other sign of life. He was, at this period, flung out
of a window by the besiegers, and cast upon a dunghill, where he lay
naked for three or four days. Yet, even after this, he was restored to
life.
ASTR. You confess the _wonder_, Evelyn, that is some concession; you
may, perchance, believe another of equal interest.
“My mother being sick to death of a fever three months after I was born,
which was the occasion she nursed me no longer, her friends and servants
thought, to all outward appearance, she was dead, and so almost two days
and a night. But Dr. Winston coming to comfort my father, went into my
mother’s room, and looking earnestly in her face, said, ‘She is so
handsome, and looks so lovely, I cannot think she is dead;’ and suddenly
took a lancet out of his pocket, and with it cut the sole of her foot,
which bled. Upon this he immediately caused her to be laid upon the bed
again, and to be rubbed, and such means, as she came to life, and
opening her eyes, saw two of her kinswomen stand by her, my Lady
Knolleys and my Lady Russell, both with great wide sleeves, as the
fashion then was, and said, ‘Did not you promise me fifteen years, and
are you come again?’ which they not understanding, persuaded her to keep
her spirits quiet in that great weakness wherein she then was; but some
hours after she desired my father and Dr. Howlsworth might be left alone
with her, to whom she said, ‘I will acquaint you, that during the time
of my trance I was in great quiet, but in a place I could neither
distinguish or describe; but the sense of leaving my girl, who is dearer
to me than all my children, remained a trouble upon my spirits. Suddenly
I saw two by me clothed in long white garments, and methought I fell
down upon my face upon the dust, and they asked me why I was so troubled
in so great happiness. I replied, O let me have the same grant given to
Hezekiah, that I may live fifteen years, to see my daughter a woman; to
which they answered, It is done, and then at that instant I awoke out of
my trance.’ And Dr. Howlsworth did then affirm that that day she died
made just fifteen years from that time.”
I remember a story of the effect of deep impression on a sensitive mind:
the sleep of a love-sick Juliet, without the entrancing draught of the
friar.
A young French lady in the Rue St. Honoré, at Paris, was condemned by
her father to a hated marriage while her heart was devoted to another.
She fell into a trance, and was buried. Under some strange influence her
lover opened her grave, and she was revived, and married. Thus the
romance of the “Beauty of Verona” was acted without its tragedy.
I have heard, but where I recollect not, a story of another French lady,
who was actually the subject of an anatomist. On the evidence of some
faint signs of vitality, he not only restored the lady to life, but
united himself to her in marriage.
There is no doubt, also, that Rachael, Lady Russell, would have been
buried alive, had not the devoted affection of her husband, and his
constant visits to her coffin, prevented it.
I read, too, that Shorigny, an hysterical girl in Paris, was watched
daily by her physician, after he was assured by the friends that she was
dead. On the sixth day, the cloth covering was seen to move, the eyes
soon after opened, and she gradually recovered.
EV. It is one of the anomalies of our science, that _similar_ causes
will often produce _opposite_ effects. We may be thrown into trance by
fright; and intense alarm may be the cause of recovery. I may relate an
oriental anecdote as an analogy, which, however, I beg you to receive
with some reservation.
A Persian, at the siege of Sardis, was about to kill Crœsus, whom he did
not recognise. By his side was the king’s dumb child, who, in a sudden
paroxysm of agony, screamed out, “Kill not Crœsus.” From this instant
(as it were a miracle), Herodotus writes, his speech was fully restored!
We learn from Bourgeois, in 1838, that a medical man, from the sudden
influence of grief, sunk into a cataleptic state, but his consciousness
never left him. The lamentations of his wife, the sympathetic condolence
of his medical friends, and the arrangements regarding his funeral, were
to him distinctly audible. He knew that he was in his coffin, and that
there was a solemn procession following him to the grave. As the solemn
words of “Earth to earth” were uttered, and the dust fell on his coffin
lid, the consciousness of this, and his horror at his impending fate,
burst the fetters of his icy trance—he shrieked aloud, and was saved.
In the “Psychological Magazine” we read of a lady who fell into a state
of catalepsy, after a violent nervous disorder.
“It seemed to her, as if in a dream, that she was really dead. Yet she
was perfectly conscious of all that happened around her in this dreadful
state. She distinctly heard her friends speaking, and lamenting her
death, at the side of her coffin; she felt them pull on her dead
clothes, and lay her in it. This feeling produced a mental anxiety which
was indescribable. She tried to cry, but her soul was without power, and
could not act on her body. She had the contradictory feeling, as if she
were in her own body, and yet not in it, at one and the same time. It
was equally impossible for her to stretch out her arm, or to open her
eyes, as to cry, although she continually endeavoured to do so. The
internal anguish of her mind was, however, at its utmost height, when
the funeral hymns were sung, and when the lid of the coffin was about to
be nailed on. The thought that she was to be buried alive was the first
one which gave activity to her soul, and caused it to operate on her
corporeal frame.”
I have been assured that the soldier who has been placed in his grave by
such an error, has been awoke in his coffin by the volley fired over
him.
Parallel with these are the instances in which vitality seemed to be
instantly excited by acute pain.
I remember the case of a cataleptic girl, related by the Abbé Menon, who
was doomed to dissection; the first stroke of the _scalpel_ awoke her,
and she lived.
Cardinal Sommaglia was not so fortunate. He fell into _syncope_ from
intense grief, and it was decided that he should be opened and embalmed.
As the surgeon’s knife punctured the lungs, the heart throbbed, and the
cardinal attempted to avert the knife with his hand; but the _die_ was
cast, and he shortly _died_.
The Abbé Prevost was also sacrificed in this way.
As Vesalius, the physician of Philip II., was opening the thorax of a
Spanish gentleman, the heart palpitated. Death also occurred here.
Vesalius was brought before the Inquisition, but was pardoned.
A gentleman was seized, apparently with apoplexy, while at cards. A vein
was opened in both arms, but _no blood flowed_. He was placed in a room
with two watchers, who slept, alas! too long; for in the morning the
room was _deluged with blood_ from the punctures, and his life was gone.
These are indeed unhappy instances of the errors of omission and
commission entailed on the fallibility of science. I believe a French
author, Bruhier, has collected fifty-two cases of persons buried alive,
four which were dissected prematurely, fifty-three which recovered, and
seventy-two which were falsely reported dead.
ASTR. There is a solemn problem associated with this, on which I have
often reflected, the solution of which, I presume, your philosophy
_cannot_ offer to us. At what moment would the mind cease to influence
the body, were there no recovery from the trance? I have sometimes felt
a mysterious influence, apart, I am sure, from philosophy, that
whispered me, the life, which I had watched in its ebb, was at length
gone. Yet, of the transit of an immaterial spirit, although convinced of
the sublime truth, it is certain we _know_ nothing.
EV. Nothing _demonstrative_. It is not, however, when the body _seems_
dead, for consciousness, or the _systemic_ life, may for awhile be
suspended by mere cold. But dissolution is _that point_, unknown to us,
when the principle of life (whether that be the influence of _arterial_
blood, or electricity, magnetism, or galvanism,) is not excitable—when
_molecular_ death has ensued; not even irritability, that _vis insita_
or _vis nervosa_ of Haller, remaining. Of course mind must instantly
depart on the commencement of _decomposition_, the brain being _then_
totally incompatible with mind. The _stoics_ believed the soul to occupy
the body _until it was putrified_, and resolved into its _materia
prima_.
ASTR. I once thought, Evelyn, that the difference in the tenacity of
life in the man and the zoophyte might with some subtlety be explained
on this principle—thus: That the life of a reasoning creature was in
_its soul_; that of an inferior animal in its _spinal irritability_.
Thus, when man is decapitated, his _soul_ is gone from him—he is dead;
but when vitality is in the _vis nervea_, as in the insect, life may
exist without a head, that is, the organ of a soul. The butterfly will
flutter, I am told, long after decapitation.
EV. The _excito-motary_ principle illustrates this fact, without the
requisition of such a notion; and life, we know, may be _artificially
sustained_ for a time after decapitation. The interesting physiology of
the _reflex actions_ of a nerve explains this, and all the terrific
convulsions of galvanized bodies.
CAST. I think I have a glimpse of your meaning, Evelyn. May we not
believe, then, that there is truth in the affirmation, that Charlotte
Corday’s cheeks _blushed_ at her exposure after her decollation?
EV. There is far more romance than truth, fair Castaly, in this story;
but I do believe the probability of a story almost as marvellous, that
the lips of Mary Stuart _prayed visibly_ after her head fell from her
body. Sœmmering has written, that if the open eyes of a decollated head
be turned full on the sun, the lids will immediately close, but this of
course _without consciousness_.
CAST. And yet some _learned_ men believed the head of Charlotte Corday
sensible of its state, from this asserted fact of its blushing.
EV. They should _not_ have believed without complete evidence. Indeed,
this question may now be deemed decided _in the negative_, by the
experiments of a learned professor of Heidelburg, on the head of
Sebastian Zink, decollated at Rastadt. On placing bitters on the tongue,
and hallooing “pardon” in his ear _at the instant of decapitation_, it
was proved that there was an utter insensibility to all.
IDA. Then sensation is instantly destroyed. In this, as in all his
dispensations, how is the mercy of the Deity displayed!
EV. It is still a question with us, whether our physical sensations on
the point of dissolution are often so acute as they appear.
Cabanis and the famous Guillotine declared their conviction that no pain
was felt at the moment of or after decapitation. In the works of Lord
Bacon, we read of one who was suspended till he was all but dead, and
his declaration was that his suffering was a mere trifle. Cowper also
left a manuscript, in which he states that in one of his three attempts
at suicide, he hung himself over his door in the Temple, but that he did
not suffer in the least.
IDA. And in drowning?
EV. While the medical committee of the Humane Society were framing those
scientific rules which have rendered the process of resuscitation so
successful, I remember especially one pale and melancholy girl, who
glided in before us like a spectre. She had attempted suicide, but her
intention was happily thwarted, after she had been for many minutes in
the water, and was apparently lifeless.
True, the mental agony which prompts to such an act, will often
overwhelm sensation; but this creature was _conscious of her act_, and
assured us that the sensation of drowning was but _an intense feeling of
faintness preceding a sinking into insensibility, with a short spasmodic
struggle; an uneasiness rather than a pain_. When Clarence therefore,
recounting his dream, exclaims,—
“My God, methought what _pain_ it was to drown!”
I believe, he should rather have referred his feelings to his
_recovery_, if the words of the pale girl were true; for, when
consciousness and sensation are returning, the feeling is intense.
Throughout the body, as it is recovering from _apathetic_ numbness, the
sense of returning circulation of the blood is terrible: an acute
sensation of _pins and needles_ in the brain and the marrow of the
spine. No wonder, then, that these resuscitated beings will request that
_no efforts_ may be made, should they again be in the state of suspended
animation. The sensation on being born is probably as acute as that on
dissolution.
IDA. Then there _is_ consciousness?
EV. The evidence of Dr. Adam Clarke will illustrate this interesting
question. Yet I differ somewhat with him, regarding so perfect a
consciousness during submersion. In his life, you will see the following
dialogue with Dr. Lettsom, in which Clarke describes his own case of
immersion:
“Dr. Lettsom said,—‘Of all that I have seen restored, or questioned
afterwards, I never found one who had the smallest recollection of any
thing that passed, from the moment they went under water, till the time
in which they were restored to life and thought.’ Dr. Clarke answered
Dr. L.,—‘I knew a case to the contrary.’ ‘Did you, indeed?’ ‘Yes, Dr.
L., and the case was my own. I was once drowned.’ And then related the
circumstances, and added,—‘I saw my danger, but thought the mare would
swim, and I knew I could ride when we were overwhelmed. It appeared to
me, that I had gone to the bottom with my eyes open. At first, I thought
I saw the bottom clearly, and then felt neither apprehension nor pain;
on the contrary, I felt as if I had been in the most delightful
situation; my mind was tranquil and uncommonly happy. I felt as if in
Paradise, and yet I do not recollect that I saw any person; the
impressions of happiness seemed not to be derived from any thing around
me, but from the state of my mind. And yet I had a general apprehension
of pleasing objects; and I cannot recollect that any thing appeared
defined, nor did my eye take in any object, only I had a general
impression of a green colour, as of fields or gardens. But my happiness
did not arise from these, but appeared to consist merely in the
tranquil, indescribably tranquil, state of my mind. By and by, I seemed
to awake as out of a slumber, and felt unutterable pain and difficulty
of breathing; and now I found I had been carried by a strong wave, and
left in very shallow water upon the shore, and the pain I felt was
occasioned by the air once more inflating my lungs and producing
respiration. How long I had been under water I cannot tell; it may
however be guessed at by this circumstance: when restored to the power
of reflection, I looked for the mare, and saw her walking leisurely down
shore towards home, then about half a mile distant from the place where
we were submerged. Now, I aver,—1st. That in being drowned I felt no
pain;—2nd. That I did not, for a simple moment, lose my
consciousness;—3rd. I felt indescribably happy, and, though dead as to
the total suspension of all the functions of life, yet I felt no pain in
dying; and I take for granted, from this circumstance, those who die by
drowning feel no pain, and that probably it is the easiest of all
deaths;—4th. That I felt no pain till once more exposed to the action
of the atmospheric air, and then I felt great pain and anguish in
returning to life, which anguish, had I continued under water, I should
have never felt;—5th. That animation must have been totally suspended
from the time I must have been under water, which time might be in some
measure ascertained by the distance the mare was from the place of my
submersion, which was at least half a mile, and she was not, when I
first observed her, making any speed;—6th. Whether there were any thing
preternatural in my escape, I cannot tell; or whether a ground swell had
not, in a merely natural way, borne me to the shore, and the
retrocession of the tide (for it was then ebbing), left me exposed to
the open air, I cannot tell. My preservation must have been the effect
of natural causes; and yet it appears to be more rational to attribute
it to a superior agency. Here then, Dr. L., is a case widely different,
it appears, from those you have witnessed, and which argues very little
for the modish doctrine of the materiality of the soul.’ Dr. Lettsom
appeared puzzled with this relation, but did not attempt to make any
remarks on it.”
And well he might; for if animation were _totally suspended_,
consciousness would have been suspended also.