Part 64

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.