Father Juan Ferreres[63] holds that aborted and newly born children should be baptized, although they give no sign of life, if they show no clear evidence of putrefaction. This opinion is mine also, but the word maceration should be substituted as more exact. Eschbach[64] says: "Infantes recenter natos et in vitae discrimine positos, aut foetus abortivos plane formatos, cum vel levissimus in eis motus apprehenditur, absolute baptizari oportet: cum autem sine motu et sensu iidem videantur neque tamen adhuc corrupti aut putrefacti sint, sine mora baptizentur conditionate: Si vivis, ego te baptizo, etc." These quotations give the common opinion of moralists at present, and this opinion is fully safe. Eschbach, however, would have the fetus "plane formatus," which is erroneous and an echo of the old Aristotelian notion. If the fetus is visible at all, open the membranes and baptize it conditionally, even if it is not as big as a pea.
An infant born apparently dead may be resuscitated after a delay very much longer than would be possible in an older person, provided always the infant has not begun to breathe.
Ferreres mistakes cases of catalepsy which have recovered consciousness for cases of apparent somatic death. In these cataleptic conditions the blood circulation does not completely cease—if it did the nervous centres would be disintegrated. The case he reports on p. 26,[65] of the woman resuscitated by Rigaudeaux in 1748, was one of catalepsy, if it ever happened. The same is true of the case from Gaspar de los Reyes,[66] which probably had some foundation in a condition of catalepsy, but which more probably is a sheer invention by Reyes. It looks like an anecdote from a medieval Florentine novella.
Old writers speak of cessation of the pulse for long periods. Ballonius[67] mentions a person in whom there was no pulse for fourteen days before death; Ramazzini[68] describes a cessation of the pulse for four days before dissolution; Schenck[69] tells of a disappearance of the pulse for three days, with recovery. These all were apparently cataleptic cases, where the circulation was very feeble and the radial pulse was not palpable. Cheyne gives an account of a Colonel Townsend who had the power of apparently dying at will. He could so suspend the heart action that no pulse could be felt, and after a short while the circulation would become normal again. The longest period in which he remained in this condition was about thirty minutes. St. Augustine mentions a priest named Rutilutus who had a power like that of Colonel Townsend, and Caillé[70] reported a similar case.
The fakirs of India carry this power to great lengths. Braid,[71] on the authority of a Sir Claude Wade, says a fakir was buried unconscious at Lahore in 1837, and the grave was guarded day and night by sentinels from an English regiment. Six weeks after the burial the man was dug up and he presented all the appearance of a corpse. The legs and arms were shrunken and stiff, and the head reclined on the shoulder, as happens in corpses. There was no perceptible circulation anywhere, yet he revived.
Honigberger, a German physician in the service of Runjeet Singh, described[72] a fakir of the Punjaub who was put into a sealed vault for forty days, and the seal of Runjeet Singh was on the coffin. Grain was sown above the vault and it was well above the ground when the man was taken out of the vault and resuscitated. Sir Henry Lawrence testified to the truth of this story. The fakir's chin was shaved, Honigberger says, before the burial, and the beard did not grow while he was in the vault.
In keeping with these stories are many curious accounts of recovery after hanging. These are frequent in writings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when hanging was almost an every-day occurrence. These narratives are much more authentic than the anecdotes told of recovery after premature burial, which are as old as literature. Paul Zacchias[73] tells of a young man who died of the plague and was set out with the corpses for burial. He revived and was taken back to the pest-house. He "died" again and was again prepared for the grave, but he came to a second time. The stock story in these premature burial cases is that of the woman who is revived by a thief who cuts her finger in an effort to steal the rings buried with her.
The important fact, however, is that in any case of death the exact moment in which the soul leaves the body is not knowable by any means we have at present, and where there is question of giving the sacraments the person apparently dead should have the benefit of the doubt. He is to receive conditional baptism, absolution, or extreme unction (preferably by the short method), in case these sacraments are required. For a whole hour after apparent death the probability that the soul has not departed is so strong that, in my opinion, a priest who does not give the necessary sacraments is virtually as guilty as if he neglected to administer them to a person evidently alive. Crile, one of the best medical authorities on this matter of somatic death, holds that the human respiratory system may survive anemia for from thirty to fifty minutes. How long after the hour a priest may administer the sacraments is not known, but a second hour, or even a third, are not unreasonable periods of time during which the sacraments may be administered conditionally. The sacraments are for man, and there is no irreverence if they are administered conditionally and the priest explains to the bystanders the reason he has for his action.
If a pregnant woman dies slowly, the fetus in her womb is likely to die owing to lack of oxygen; if she dies suddenly, the child may live for variable periods in various cases. Brotherton reported a case where a living child was taken from a woman twenty-three minutes after the death of the mother. Tarnier, the noted French obstetrician, told of a remarkable incident which happened in Paris during the rioting by the Commune after the war of 1870. The rioters fired on a maternity hospital, and a pregnant woman sitting on a bed in a ward was instantly killed by a bullet through her head. After a while she was discovered dead, and Tarnier was sent for to save the fetus, as its heart-sounds could be heard through the abdominal wall. When he began the operation the hospital was fired upon again, and it was necessary to carry the corpse to the cellar of the building. There Tarnier, an hour and three quarters at least after the death of the women, extracted a living child from the corpse. Hirst[74] tells of another case which was narrated to him by an American naval surgeon who saw it in the harbor of Rio Janeiro during the revolution at the beginning of the present republic of Brazil. A woman near term was killed instantly by a piece of shell. As soon as she fell to the ground a Brazilian surgeon, who was standing near by, cut open her abdomen with a penknife and drew out the child, but it was already dead.