According to the law of the Jews, who appear to have been in constant dread of pestilential disease, the inhumation of the dead were most hasty. Yet in this instance many Rabbi maintain that the Talmud has been erroneously interpreted, for although it decreed that a night should not be allowed to pass before inhumation, it clearly meant that actual death must have been ascertained.
While such fears are entertained of suspended animation being taken for dissolution, it is strange that in some savage tribes the aged are allowed to perish without any care being taken to prolong their lives. Such is the custom of some of the Esquimaux, where old and decrepit creatures are abandoned in their huts and left to their fate. An ancient tradition stated that the inhabitants of the Isle of Syria never died of any distemper, but dropped into their graves at a certain old age.
It would be desirable that in cases where interment is speedily resorted to, a physician should attend, in order to ascertain that death had actually taken place. This is seldom practised, from the common saying “that it is uncivil on the part of a doctor to visit a dead patient.” Various means are employed to ascertain death: the looking-glass applied to the mouth of the corpse, to find out whether breath had departed; the coldness of the extremities, the falling of the lower jaw, the rigidity of the limbs, and various other appearances, are universally known; but in the villages of Italy and Portugal, pins and needles are frequently driven under the nails, in what is vulgarly called the quick, to excite an excruciating pain if life should not have fled. The most certain evidence, when bodies are long kept, is most decidedly the commencement of decomposition; but, in other cases, the action of the voltaic pile on a bared muscle is an infallible test.
It is much to be feared that on the field of battle and naval actions many individuals apparently dead are buried or thrown overboard. The history of François de Civille, a French captain, who was missing at the siege of Rouen, is rather curious: at the storming of the town he was supposed to have been killed, and was thrown, with other bodies, in the ditch, where he remained from eleven in the morning to half-past six in the evening; when his servant, observing some latent heat, carried the body into the house. For five days and five nights his master did not exhibit the slightest sign of life, although the body gradually recovered its warmth. At the expiration of this time, the town was carried by assault, and the servants of an officer belonging to the besiegers, having found the supposed corpse of Civille, threw it out of window, with no other covering than his shirt. Fortunately for the captain, he had fallen upon a dunghill, where he remained senseless for three days longer, when his body was taken up by his relations for sepulture, and ultimately brought to life. What was still more strange, Civille, like Macduff, had been “from his mother’s womb untimely ripp’d,” having been brought into the world by a Cæsarean operation, which his mother did not survive; and after his last wonderful escape he used to sign his name with the addition of “three times born, three times buried, and three times risen from the dead by the grace of God.”
The fate of the unfortunate Abbé Prevost, author of “Manon Lescaut,” and other esteemed novels, was lamentable beyond expression. In passing through the forest of Chantilly, he was seized with an apoplectic fit: the body, cold and motionless, was found the following morning, and carried by some woodcutters to the village surgeon, who proceeded to open it; it was during this terrific operation that the wretched man was roused to a sense of his miserable condition by the agonies he endured, to expire soon after in all the complicated horrors of his situation. Various cases are recorded where persons remained in a state of apparent death for a considerable time. Cullen mentions an hysterical woman who was deprived of movement and sensibility for six days. Licelus knew a nun of Bresia, who, after an hysteric attack, continued in an inanimate state for ten days and nights.
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION.
The singular fact of persons, more especially individuals who were in the habit of indulging in the use of spirituous liquors, having taken fire and been consumed, is authenticated beyond the slightest doubt. Little confidence, it is true, can be placed in the reports on this subject which occasionally appear in the newspapers of different countries; but many celebrated practitioners have witnessed and recorded the event, and physiologists have endeavoured to account for its causes. The celebrated Le Cat mentions a woman of Rheims, of the name of Millet, who was found consumed at the distance of two feet from her chimney; the room exhibited no appearance of fire, but of the unfortunate sufferer nothing was found except her skull, the bones of the lower extremities, and some vertebræ. A servant-girl was accused of the murder, and condemned to death; but on her appeal, and a subsequent investigation, her innocence was fully ascertained.
Joseph Battaglia, a surgeon of Ponte Bosio, relates the following case:—Don G. Maria Bertholi, a priest of Mount Valerius, went to the fair of Filetto, and afterwards visited a relation in Fenilo, where he intended to pass the night. Before retiring to rest, he was left reading his breviary; when, shortly afterwards, the family were alarmed by his loud cries and a strange noise in his chamber. On opening the door, he was lying prostrate on the floor, and surrounded by flickering flames. Battaglia was immediately sent for, and on his arrival the unfortunate man was found in a most deplorable state. The integuments of the arms and the back were either consumed or detached in hanging flaps. The sufferer was sufficiently sensible to give an account of himself. He said that he felt all of a sudden as if his arm had received a violent blow from a club, and at the same time he saw scintillations of fire rising from his shirt-sleeves, which were consumed without having burned the wrists; a handkerchief, which he had tied round his shoulders, between the shirt and the skin, was intact. His drawers were also sound; but, strange to say, his silk skull-cap was burnt, while his hair bore no marks of combustion. The unfortunate man only survived the event four days, when mortification of the burnt parts was most extensive, and the body emitted intolerable putrid effluvia. The circumstances which attended this case would seem to warrant the conclusion that the electric fluid was the chief agent in the combustion.
Bianchini relates the death of the Countess of Cornelia Bandi, of Cesena, who was in the habit of using frictions of camphorated spirits. She was found consumed close to her bedside. No traces of fire could be observed in the room—the very lights had been burnt down to their sockets; but the furniture, closets, and linen were covered with a grayish soot, damp and clammy.