We can also imagine, that women, after the exhaustion consequent on severe and protracted labours, may lie for some time in a state so like that of death, as to deceive the by-standers; a very extraordinary case of this kind is related in the Journal des Sçavans, Janvier 1749.
Dr. Gordon Smith, in his work on Forensic Medicine, has observed that in cases of precipitancy or confusion, as in times of public sickness, the living have not unfrequently been mingled with the dead, and that in warm climates, where speedy interment is more necessary than in temperate and cold countries, persons have even been entombed alive; we feel no hesitation in believing that such an event may be possible; but the very case with which the author illustrates his position is sufficient to convince us that its occurrence would be highly culpable, and could only arise from the most unpardonable inattention; “I was” says Dr. Smith, “an eye witness of an instance in a celebrated city on the continent, where a poor woman, yet alive, was solemnly ushered to the margin of the grave in broad day, and whose interment would have deliberately taken place, but for the interposition of the by-standers;” if the casual observer was thus able to detect the signs of animation, the case is hardly one that should have been adduced to shew the difficulty of deciding between real and apparent death. Many other illustrations might be adduced, but it is not our intention to amuse the reader with a relation of those numerous nugæ canoræ that enliven several popular productions on the subject of trances, premature interments, and extraordinary resuscitations; the public have always betrayed a morbid curiosity upon the subject, and the stories of persons buried alive have ever found a ready access to our credulity, as well as to our compassion.
Amongst the different anecdotes which have been brought forward in support of the popular belief in the frequency of living interment, and in proof of the fallacy of those signs which are commonly received as the unerring indications of death, we read of numerous instances where the knife of the anatomist has proved the means of resuscitating the supposed corpse; Philippe Peu, the celebrated French accoucheur, relates, himself, the case of a woman, upon whose supposed corpse he proceeded to perform the cæsarean section, when the first incision betrayed the awful fallacy under which he operated; the history of the unfortunate Vesalius, physician to Philip II. of Spain, furnishes another instance, upon which considerable stress has been laid; upon dissecting a Spanish gentleman, it is said that on opening the thorax the heart was found palpitating; for which he was brought before the inquisition, and would probably have suffered its most severe judgment, had not the king interceded in his behalf, and obtained for him the privilege of expiating his offence by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.[[4]]
M. Bruhier[[5]] also relates a case on the authority of M. l’Abbé Menon, of a young woman who was restored by the first incision of the anatomist’s scalpel, and lived many years afterwards. With respect to the instance of Vesalius we would make this general observation, which will probably apply to most of the cases on record; that the movements which have been observed on such occasions are not to be received as demonstrations of life, they merely arise from a degree of muscular irritability which often lingers for many hours after dissolution, and which, on its apparent cessation, may be even re-excited by the application of galvanic stimuli.
But there is a propensity in the human mind to believe in these horrors, because between credulity and fear there is an inherent affinity and alliance; and it may be very safely asserted, that there is nothing of which we have a greater instinctive horror,[[6]] than of any force by which our voluntary exertions are totally repressed; hence it is, as Cuvier has remarked, that the poetic fictions best calculated to insure our sympathy, are those which represent sentient beings inclosed within immoveable bodies; the sighs of Clorinda issuing, with her blood, from the trunk of the cypress, as related in the fable of Tasso, would arrest the fury of the most savage mortal; and the sufferings which attended the confinement of Ariel, by the witch Sycorax, within the rift of a cloven pine, are described by Prospero as being of so pitiable a description as to move the sympathy of the very beasts of the forest.
--------“She did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers,
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprison’d, thou didst painfully remain