VAMPYRISM.—Tale exemplifying the superstition—The Vampyr state of
the body in the grave—Various instances of death-trance—The risk of
premature interment considered—The Vampyr visit.
In acknowledging my former letter, you express an eager desire to
learn, as you phrase it, “all about Vampyrs, if there ever were such
things.” I will not delay satisfying your curiosity, although by so
doing I interrupt the logical order of my communications. It is,
perhaps, all the better. The proper place of this subject falls in the
midst of a philosophical disquisition; and it would have been a pity
not to present it to you in its pristine colouring. But how came your
late tutor, Mr. H., to leave you in ignorance upon a point on which, in
my time, schoolboys much your juniors entertained decided opinions?
Were there ever such things as Vampyrs? _Tantamne rem tam negligenter!_
I turn to the learned pages of Horst for a luminous and precise
definition of the destructive and mysterious beings whose existence you
have ventured to consider problematical.
“A Vampyr is a dead body which continues to live in the grave; which
it leaves, however, by night, for the purpose of sucking the blood of
the living, whereby it is nourished and preserved in good condition,
instead of being decomposed like other dead bodies.”
Upon my word, you really deserve, since Mr. George Combe has clearly
shown, in his admirable work on the Constitution of Man, and its
adaptation to the surrounding world, that ignorance is a statutable
crime before nature, and punished by the laws of Providence—you
deserve, I say, unless you contrive to make Mr. H. your substitute,
which I think would be just, yourself to be the subject of the
nocturnal visit of a Vampyr. Your skepticism will abate pretty
considerably when you see him stealthily entering your room, yet are
powerless under the fascination of his fixed and leaden eye—when you
are conscious, as you lie motionless with terror, of his nearer and
nearer approach—when you feel his face, fresh with the smell of the
grave, bent over your throat, while his keen teeth make a fine incision
in your jugular, preparatory to his commencing his plain but nutritive
repast.
You would look a little paler the next morning, but that would be all
for the moment; for Fischer informs us that the bite of a Vampyr leaves
in general no mark upon the person. But he fearfully adds, “it (the
bite) is nevertheless speedily fatal,” unless the bitten person protect
himself by eating some of the earth from the grave of the Vampyr, and
smearing himself with his blood. Unfortunately, indeed, these measures
are seldom, if ever, of more than temporary use. Fischer adds, “if
through these precautions the life of the victim be prolonged for a
period, sooner or later he ends with becoming a Vampyr himself; that is
to say, he dies and is buried, but continues to lead a Vampyr life in
the grave, nourishing himself by infecting others, and promiscuously
propagating Vampyrism.”
This is no romancer’s dream. It is a succinct account of a superstition
which to this day services in the east of Europe, where little more
than a century ago it was frightfully prevalent. At that period
Vampyrism spread like a pestilence through Servia and Wallachia,
causing numerous deaths, and disturbing all the land with fear of the
mysterious visitation, against which no one felt himself secure.
Here is something like a good, solid, practical popular delusion. Do
I believe it? To be sure I do. The facts are matter of history: the
people died like rotted sheep; and the cause and method of their dying
was, in their belief, what has just been stated. You suppose, then,
they died frightened out of their lives, as men have died whose pardon
has been proclaimed when their necks were already on the block, of the
belief that they were going to die? Well, if that were all, the subject
would still be worth examining. But there is more in it than that, as
the following o’er true tale will convince you, the essential points of
which are authenticated by documentary evidence.
In the spring of 1727, there returned from the Levant to the village
of Meduegna, near Belgrade, one Arnod Paole, who, in a few years of
military service and varied adventure, had amassed enough to purchase
a cottage and an acre or two of land in his native place, where he
gave out that he meant to pass the remainder of his days. He kept
his word. Arnod had yet scarcely reached the prime of manhood; and
though he must have encountered the rough as well as the smooth of
life, and have mingled with many a wild and reckless companion, yet
his naturally good disposition and honest principles had preserved him
unscathed in the scenes he had passed through. At all events, such
were the thoughts expressed by his neighbours as they discussed his
return and settlement among them in the Stube of the village Hof. Nor
did the frank and open countenance of Arnod, his obliging habits and
steady conduct, argue their judgment incorrect. Nevertheless, there was
something occasionally noticeable in his ways—a look and tone that
betrayed inward disquiet. Often would he refuse to join his friends,
or on some sudden plea abruptly quit their society. And he still more
unaccountably, and as it seemed systematically, avoided meeting his
pretty neighbour Nina, whose father occupied the next tenement to
his own. At the age of seventeen, Nina was as charming a picture of
youth, cheerfulness, innocence, and confidence, as you could have
seen in all the world. You could not look into her limpid eyes, which
steadily returned your gaze, without seeing to the bottom of the pure
and transparent spring of her thoughts. Why, then, did Arnod shrink
from meeting her? He was young; had a little property; had health and
industry; and he had told his friends he had formed no ties in other
lands. Why, then, did he avoid the fascination of the pretty Nina, who
seemed a being made to chase from any brow the clouds of gathering
care? But he did so; yet less and less resolutely, for he felt the
charm of her presence. Who could have done otherwise? And how could he
long resist—he didn’t—the impulse of his fondness for the innocent girl
who often sought to cheer his fits of depression?
And they were to be united—were betrothed; yet still an anxious gloom
would fitfully overcast his countenance, even in the sunshine of those
hours.
“What is it, dear Arnod, that makes you sad? It cannot be on my
account, I know, for you were sad before you ever noticed me; and
that, I think,” (and you should have seen the deepening rose upon her
cheeks,) “surely first made me notice you.”
“Nina,” he answered, “I have done, I fear, a great wrong in trying to
gain your affections. Nina, I have a fixed impression that I shall not
live; yet, knowing this, I have selfishly made my existence necessary
to your happiness.”
“How strangely you talk, dear Arnod! Who in the village is stronger and
healthier than you? You feared no danger when you were a soldier. What
danger do you fear as a villager of Meduegna?”
“It haunts me, Nina.”
“But, Arnod, you were sad before you thought of me. Did you then fear
to die?”
“Ah, Nina, it is something worse than death.” And his vigorous frame
shook with agony.
“Arnod, I conjure you, tell me.”
“It was in Cossova this fate befell me. Here you have hitherto escaped
the terrible scourge. But there they died, and the dead visited the
living. I experienced the first frightful visitation, and I fled; but
not till I had sought his grave, and exacted the dread expiation from
the Vampyr.”
Nina’s blood ran cold. She stood horror-stricken. But her young heart
soon mastered her first despair. With a touching voice she spoke—
“Fear not, dear Arnod; fear not now. I will be your shield, or I will
die with you!”
And she encircled his neck with her gentle arms, and returning hope
shone, Iris-like, amid her falling tears. Afterwards they found a
reasonable ground for banishing or allaying their apprehension in the
length of time which had elapsed since Arnod left Cossova, during which
no fearful visitant had again approached him; and they fondly trusted
_that_ gave them security.
It is a strange world. The ills we fear are commonly not those which
overwhelm us. The blows that reach us are for the most part unforeseen.
One day, about a week after this conversation, Arnod missed his footing
when on the top of a loaded hay-wagon, and fell from it to the ground.
He was picked up insensible, and carried home, where, after lingering a
short time, he died. His interment, as usual, followed immediately. His
fate was sad and premature. But what pencil could paint Nina’s grief!
Twenty or thirty days after his decease, says the perfectly
authenticated report of these transactions, several of the
neighbourhood complained that they were haunted by the deceased Arnod;
and, what was more to the purpose, four of them died. The evil, looked
at skeptically, was bad enough, but aggravated by the suggestions of
superstition, it spread a panic through the whole district. To allay
the popular terror, and if possible to get at the root of the evil, a
determination was come to publicly to disinter the body of Arnod, with
the view of ascertaining whether he really was a Vampyr, and, in that
event, of treating him conformably. The day fixed for this proceeding
was the fortieth after his burial.
It was on a gray morning in early August that the commission visited
the quiet cemetery of Meduegna, which, surrounded with a wall of unhewn
stone, lies sheltered by the mountain that, rising in undulating green
slopes, irregularly planted with fruit trees, ends in an abrupt craggy
ridge, feathered with underwood. The graves were, for the most part,
neatly kept, with borders of box, or something like it, and flowers
between; and at the head of most a small wooden cross, painted black,
bearing the name of the tenant. Here and there a stone had been
raised. One of considerable height, a single narrow slab, ornamented
with grotesque Gothic carvings, dominated over the rest. Near this
lay the grave of Arnod Paole, towards which the party moved. The work
of throwing out the earth was begun by the gray, crooked old sexton,
who lived in the Leichenhaus, beyond the great crucifix. He seemed
unconcerned enough; no Vampyr would think of extracting a supper out of
him. Nearest the grave stood two military surgeons, or feldscherers,
from Belgrade, and a drummer-boy, who held their case of instruments.
The boy looked on with keen interest; and when the coffin was exposed
and rather roughly drawn out of the grave, his pale face and bright
intent eye showed how the scene moved him. The sexton lifted the lid of
the coffin: the body had become inclined to one side. Then turning it
straight, “Ha! ha!” said he, pointing to fresh blood upon the lips—“Ha!
ha! What! Your mouth not wiped since last night’s work?” The spectators
shuddered; the drummer-boy sank forward, fainting, and upset the
instrument-case, scattering its contents; the senior surgeon, infected
with the horror of the scene, repressed a hasty exclamation, and simply
crossed himself. They threw water on the drummer-boy, and he recovered,
but would not leave the spot. Then they inspected the body of Arnod. It
looked as if it had not been dead a day. On handling it, the scarf-skin
came off, but below were _new skin and new nails_! How could _they_
have come there but from its foul feeding! The case was clear enough;
there lay before them the thing they dreaded—the Vampyr. So, without
more ado, they simply drove a stake through poor Arnod’s chest,
whereupon a quantity of blood gushed forth, and the corpse uttered an
audible groan. “Murder! oh, murder!” shrieked the drummer-boy, as he
rushed wildly, with convulsed gestures, from the cemetery.
The drummer-boy was not far from the mark. But, quitting the romancing
vein, which had led me to try and restore the original colours of the
picture, let me confine myself, in describing the rest of the scene and
what followed, to the words of my authority.
The body of Arnod was then burnt to ashes, which were returned to the
grave. The authorities further staked and burnt the bodies of the four
others which were supposed to have been infected by Arnod. No mention
is made of the state in which they were found. The adoption of these
decisive measures failed, however, entirely to extinguish the evil,
which continued still to hang about the village. About five years
afterwards it had again become very rife, and many died through it;
whereupon the authorities determined to make another and a complete
clearance of the Vampyrs in the cemetery, and with that object they had
all the graves, to which present suspicion attached, opened, and their
contents officially anatomized, of which procedure the following is the
medical report, here and there _abridged_ only:—
1. A woman of the name of Stana, twenty years of age, who had died
three months before of a three days’ illness following her confinement.
She had before her death avowed that she had _anointed_ herself with
the blood of a Vampyr, to liberate herself from his persecution.
Nevertheless, she, as well as her infant, whose body through careless
interment had been half eaten by the dogs, had died. Her body was
entirely free from decomposition. On opening it, the chest was found
full of recently effused blood, and the bowels had exactly the
appearances of sound health. The skin and nails of her hands and feet
were loose and came off, but underneath lay new skin and nails.
2. A woman of the name of Miliza, who had died at the end of a three
months’ illness. The body had been buried ninety and odd days. In the
chest was liquid blood. The viscera were as in the former instance.
The body was declared by a heyduk, who recognised it, to be in better
condition, and fatter, than it had been in the woman’s legitimate
lifetime.
3. The body of a child eight years old, that had likewise been buried
ninety days: it was in the Vampyr condition.
4. The son of a heyduk named Milloc, sixteen years old. The body
had lain in the grave nine weeks. He had died after three days’
indisposition, and was in the condition of a Vampyr.
5. Joachim, likewise son of a heyduk, seventeen years old. He had died
after three days’ illness; had been buried eight weeks and some days;
was found in the Vampyr state.
6. A woman of the name of Rusha, who had died of an illness of ten
days’ duration, and had been six weeks buried, in whom likewise fresh
blood was found in the chest.
(The reader will understand, that to _see_ blood in the chest, it is
first necessary to _cut_ the chest open.)
7. The body of a girl of ten years of age, who had died two months
before. It was likewise in the Vampyr state, perfectly undecomposed,
with blood in the chest.
8. The body of the wife of one Hadnuck, buried seven weeks before;
and that of her infant, eight weeks old, buried only twenty-one days.
They were both in a state of decomposition, though buried in the same
ground, and closely adjoining the others.
9. A servant, by name Rhade, twenty-three years of age; he had died
after an illness of three months’ duration, and the body had been
buried five weeks. It was in a state of decomposition.
10. The body of the heyduk Stanco, sixty years of age, who had died six
weeks previously. There was much blood and other fluid in the chest and
abdomen, and the body was in the Vampyr condition.
11. Millac, a heyduk, twenty-five years old. The body had been in the
earth six weeks. It was perfectly in the Vampyr condition.
12. Stanjoika, the wife of a heyduk, twenty years old; had died after
an illness of three days, and had been buried eighteen. The countenance
was florid. There was blood in the chest and in the heart. The viscera
were perfectly sound; the skin remarkably fresh.
The document which gives the above particulars is signed by three
regimental surgeons, and formally countersigned by a lieutenant-colonel
and sub-lieutenant. It bears the date of “June 7, 1732, Meduegna near
Belgrade.” No doubt can be entertained of its authenticity, or of
its _general_ fidelity; the less that it does not stand alone, but
is supported by a mass of evidence to the same effect. It appears to
establish, beyond question, that where the fear of Vampyrism prevails,
and there occur several deaths, in the popular belief connected with
it, the bodies, when disinterred weeks after burial, present the
appearance of corpses from which life has only recently departed.
What inference shall we draw from this fact?—that Vampyrism is true in
the popular sense?—and that these fresh-looking and well-conditioned
corpses had some mysterious source of preternatural nourishment? That
would be to adopt, not to solve the superstition. Let us content
ourselves with a notion not so monstrous, but still startling enough:
that the bodies, which were found in the so-called Vampyr state,
instead of being in a new or mystical condition, were simply alive
in the common way, or had been so for some time subsequent to their
interment; that, in short, they were the bodies of persons who
had been buried alive, and whose life, where it yet lingered, was
finally extinguished through the ignorance and barbarity of those who
disinterred them. In the following sketch of a similar scene to that
above described, the correctness of this inference comes out with
terrific force.
Erasmus Francisci, in his remarks upon the description of the Dukedom
of Krain by Valvasor, speaks of a man of the name of Grando, in the
district of Kring, who died, was buried, and became a Vampyr, and as
such was exhumed for the purpose of having a stake thrust through him.
“When they opened his grave, after he had been long buried, his face
was found with a colour, and his features made natural sorts of
movements, as if the dead man smiled. He even opened his mouth as if he
would inhale fresh air. They held the crucifix before him, and called
in a loud voice, ‘See, this is Jesus Christ who redeemed your soul
from hell, and died for you.’ After the sound had acted on his organs
of hearing, and he had connected perhaps some ideas with it, tears
began to flow from the dead man’s eyes. Finally, when after a short
prayer for his poor soul, they proceeded to hack off his head, the
corpse uttered a screech, and turned and rolled just as if it had been
alive—and the grave was full of blood.”
We have thus succeeded in interpreting one of the unknown terms in
the Vampyr theorem. The suspicious character, who had some dark way
of nourishing himself in the grave, turns out to be an unfortunate
gentleman (or lady) whom his friends had buried under a mistake while
he was still alive, and who, if they afterwards mercifully let him
alone, died sooner or later either naturally or of the premature
interment—in either case, it is to be hoped, with no interval of
restored consciousness. The state which thus passed for death and led
to such fatal consequences, apart from superstition, deserves our
serious consideration; for, although of very rare, it is of continual
occurrence, and society is not sufficiently on its guard against a
contingency so dreadful when overlooked. When the nurse or the doctor
has announced that all is over—that the valued friend or relative has
breathed his last—no doubt crosses any one’s mind of the reality of the
sad event. Disease is now so well understood—every step in its march
laid down and foreseen—the approach of danger accurately estimated—the
liability of the patient, according to his powers of resisting it, to
succumb earlier or to hold out longer—all is theoretically so clear
that a wholesome suspicion of error in the verdict of the attendants
seldom suggests itself. The evil I am considering ought not, however,
to be attributed to redundance of knowledge: it arises from its partial
lack—from a too general neglect of one very important section in
pathological science. The laity, if not the doctors too, constantly
lose sight of the fact, that there exists an alternative to the fatal
event of ordinary disease; that a patient is liable at any period of
illness to deviate, or, as it were, to slide off, from the customary
line of disease into another and a deceptive route—_instead of death,
to encounter apparent death_.
The Germans express this condition of the living body by the term
“scheintod,” which signifies exactly _apparent death_; and it is
perhaps a better term than our English equivalent, “suspended
animation.” But both these expressions are generic terms, and a
specific term is still wanted to denote the present class of instances.
To meet this exigency, I propose, for reasons which will afterwards
appear, to employ the term “death-trance” to designate the cases we are
investigating.
Death-trance is, then, one of the forms of suspended animation: there
are several others. After incomplete poisoning, after suffocation
in either of its various ways, after exposure to cold in infants
newly born, a state is occasionally met with, of which (however each
may still differ from the rest) the common feature is an apparent
suspension of the vital actions. But all of these so-cited instances
agree in another important respect, which second inter-agreement
separates them as a class from death-trance. They represent, each and
all, a period of conflict between the effects of certain deleterious
impressions and the vital principle, the latter struggling against the
weight and force of the former. Such is not the case in death-trance.
Death-trance is a positive status—a period of repose —the duration of
which is sometimes definite and predetermined, though unknown. Thus
the patient, the term of the death-trance having expired, occasionally
suddenly wakes, entirely and at once restored. Oftener, however, the
machinery which has been stopped seems to require to be jogged—then it
goes on again.
The basis of death-trance is suspension of the action of the heart,
and of the breathing, and of voluntary motion; generally likewise
feeling and intelligence, and the vegetative changes in the body, are
suspended. With these phenomena is joined loss of external warmth;
so that the usual evidence of life is gone. But there have occurred
varieties of this condition, in which occasional slight manifestations
of one or other of the vital actions have been observed.
Death-trance may occur as a primary affection, suddenly or gradually.
The diseases the course of which it is liable, as it were, to
bifurcate, or to graft itself upon, are first and principally all
disorders of the nervous system. But in any form of disease, when the
body is brought to a certain degree of debility, death-trance may
supervene. Age and sex have to do with its occurrence; which is more
frequent in the young than in the old, in women than in men—differences
evidently connected with greater irritability of the nervous system.
Accordingly, women in labour are among the most liable to death-trance,
and it is from such a case that I will give a first instance of the
affection as portrayed by a medical witness. (_Journal des Savans_,
1749.)
M. Rigaudeaux, surgeon to the military hospital, and licensed accoucher
at Douai, was sent for on the 8th of September, 1745, to attend the
wife of Francis Dumont, residing two leagues from the town. He was
late in getting there; it was half-past eight, A. M.—too late, it
seemed; the patient was declared to have died at six o’clock, after
eighteen hours of ineffectual labour-pains. M. Rigaudeaux inspected
the body; there was no pulse or breath; the mouth was full of froth,
the abdomen tumid. He brought away the infant, which he committed to
the care of the nurses, who, after trying to reanimate it for three
hours, gave up the attempt, and prepared to lay it out, when it opened
its mouth. They then gave it wine, and it was speedily recovered. M.
Rigaudeaux, who returned to the house as this occurred, inspected again
the body of the mother. (It had been already nailed down in a coffin.)
He examined it with the utmost care; but he came to the conclusion that
it was certainly dead. Nevertheless, as the joints of the limbs were
still flexible, although seven hours had elapsed since its apparent
death, he left the strictest injunctions to watch the body carefully,
to apply stimulants to the nostrils from time to time, to slap the
palms of the hands, and the like. At half-past three o’clock symptoms
of returning animation showed themselves, and the patient recovered.
The period during which every ordinary sign of life may be absent,
without the prevention of their return, is unknown, but in
well-authenticated cases it has much exceeded the period observed in
the above instance. Here is an example borrowed from the _Journal des
Savans_, 1741.
There was a Colonel Russell, whose wife, to whom he was affectionately
attached, died, or appeared to do so. But he would not allow the body
to be buried; and threatened to shoot any one who should interfere to
remove it for that purpose. His conduct was guided by reason as well
as by affection and instinct. He said he would not part from the body
till its decomposition had begun. Eight days had passed, during which
the body of his wife gave no sign of life: when, as he sat bedewing her
hand with his tears, the church-bell tolled, and, to his unspeakable
amazement, his wife sat up and said—“That is the last bell; we shall be
too late.” She recovered.
There are cases on record of persons, who could spontaneously fall
into death-trance. Monti, in a letter to Haller, adverts to several;
and mentions, in particular, a peasant upon whom, when he assumed this
state, the flies would settle; breathing, the pulse, and all ordinary
signs of life disappeared. A priest of the name of Cælius Rhodaginus
had the same faculty. But the most celebrated instance is that of
Colonel Townshend, mentioned in the surgical works of Gooch, by whom
and by Dr. Cheyne and Dr. Baynard, and by Mr. Shrine, an apothecary,
the performance of Colonel Townshend was seen and attested. They had
long attended him, for he was an habitual invalid, and he had often
invited them to witness the phenomenon of his dying and coming to life
again; but they had hitherto refused, from fear of the consequences
to himself: at last they assented. Accordingly, in their presence,
Colonel Townshend laid himself down on his back, and Dr. Cheyne
undertook to observe his pulse; Dr. Baynard laid his hand on his
heart, and Mr. Shrine had a looking-glass to hold to his mouth. After
a few seconds, pulse, breathing, and the action of the heart, were no
longer to be observed. Each of the witnesses satisfied himself of
the entire cessation of these phenomena. When the death-trance had
lasted half-an-hour, the doctors began to fear that their patient
had pushed the experiment too far, and was dead in earnest; and they
were preparing to leave the house, when a slight movement of the body
attracted their attention. They renewed their routine of observation;
when the pulse and sensible motion of the heart gradually returned,
and breathing, and consciousness. The tale ends abruptly. Colonel
Townshend, on recovering, sent for his attorney, made his will, and
died, for good and all, six hours afterwards.
Although many have recovered from death-trance, and there seems to
be in each case a definite period to its duration, yet its event is
not always so fortunate. The patient sometimes really dies during
its continuance, either unavoidably, or in consequence of adequate
measures not being taken to stimulate him to waken, or to support
life. The following very good instance rests on the authority of Dr.
Schmidt, a physician of the hospital of Paderborn, where it occurred,
(_Rheinisch-Westphälischer Anzeiger_, 1835, No. 57 and 58.)
A young man of the name of Caspar Kreite, from Berne, died in the
hospital of Paderborn, but his body could not be interred for three
weeks, for the following reasons. During the first twenty-four hours
after drawing its last breath, the corpse opened its eyes, and the
pulse could be felt, for a few minutes, beating feebly and irregularly.
On the third and fourth day, points of the skin, which had been burned
to test the reality of his death, suppurated. On the fifth day the
corpse changed the position of one hand: on the ninth day a vesicular
eruption appeared on the back. For nine days there was a vertical
fold of the skin of the forehead—a sort of frown—and the features had
not the character of death. The lips remained red till the eighteenth
day; and the joints preserved their flexibility from first to last.
He lay in this state in a warm room for nineteen days, without any
farther alteration than a sensible wasting in flesh. Till after the
nineteenth day no discoloration of the body, or odour of putrefaction,
was observed. He had been cured of ague, and laboured under a slight
chest affection; but there had been no adequate cause for his death. It
is evident that this person was much more alive than many are in the
death-trance; and one half suspects that stimulants and nourishment,
properly introduced, might have entirely reanimated him.
I might exemplify death-trance by many a well authenticated romantic
story.—A noise heard in a vault; the people, instead of breaking open
the door, go for the keys, and for authority to act, and return too
late; the unfortunate person is found dead, having previously gnawn her
hand and arm in agony.—A lady is buried with a jewel of value on her
finger; thieves open the vault to possess themselves of the treasure;
the ring cannot be drawn from the finger, and the thieves proceed to
cut the finger off; the lady, wakening from her trance, scares the
thieves away, and recovers.—A young married lady dies and is buried; a
former admirer, to whom her parents had refused her hand, bribes the
sexton to let him see once more the form he loved. The body opportunely
comes to life at this moment, and flies from Paris with its first lover
to England, where they are married. Venturing to return to France, the
lady is recognised, and is reclaimed by her previous husband through
a suit at law; her counsel demurs, on the ground of the desertion and
burial; but the law not admitting this plea, she flies again to England
with her preserver, to avoid the judgment of the parliament of Paris,
in the acts of which the case stands recorded. There are one or two
other cases that I dare not cite, the particulars of which transcend
the wildest flights of imagination.
It may be thought that these are all tales of the olden time; and that
the very case I have given from the hospital at Paderborn shows that
now medical men are sufficiently circumspect, and the public really on
its guard to prevent a living person being interred as one dead. And
I grant that in England, among all but the poorest class, the danger
is practically inconsiderable of being buried alive. But that it still
exists for every class, and that for the poor the danger is great and
serious, I am afraid there is too much reason for believing. It is
stated in Froriep’s _Notizen_, 1829, No. 522, that, agreeably to a then
recent ordinance in New York, coffins presented for burial were kept
above ground eight days, open at the head, and so arranged, that the
least movement of the body would ring a bell, through strings attached
to the hands and feet. It will hardly be credited, that _out of twelve
hundred_ whose interment had been thus postponed, _six returned to
life_—one in every two hundred! The arrangement thus beneficently
adopted at New York is, however, imperfect, as it makes time the
criterion for interment. The time is _not_ known during which a body
in death-trance may remain alive. Nothing but one positive condition
of the body, which I will presently mention, authenticates death. It
is frightful to think how, in the south of Europe, within twenty-four
hours after the last breath bodies are shovelled into pits among heaped
corpses; and to imagine what fearful agonies of despair must sometimes
be encountered by unhappy beings, who wake amid the unutterable horrors
of such a grave. But it is enough to look at home, and to make no delay
in providing there for the careful watching of the bodies of the poor,
till life has certainly departed. Many do not dream how barbarous and
backward the vaunted nineteenth century will appear to posterity!
But there is another danger to which society is obnoxious through not
making sufficient account of the contingency of death-trance, that
appears to me more urgent and menacing than even the risk of being
buried alive.