Every one, however, of the signs enumerated is open to exceptions; although, of course, the concurrence of many, or of all, tending in the same direction, will make death or life almost certain; but the only absolutely conclusive evidence of death is putrefaction, which is sometimes much delayed by the previous emaciation of the deceased, or by cold dry weather, but which sooner or later removes all doubt. The first indications of decay are in the eyeball, which becomes flaccid, and in the discoloration of the skin of the trunk; its later ones are well known to every one. One M. Mangin (who contributed a notice of this subject to the "Correspondant" for March 25th last, to which I am indebted for several facts I have mentioned) supposes that the buzzing, humming noise which is heard over all the body of a living person would furnish a certain means of distinguishing real from apparent death. He does not seem to be aware that M. Collongues, the principal authority for what is called "dynamoscopy," has found that this noise is absent in some cases of catalepsy and trance, for which it is proposed as a test. Certain authorities, both in England and France, have thought that microscopal examination of the blood would be decisive; but unfortunately irregularity in shape and indentation of the red disks (on which they would rely) occur sometimes during life, and are only among the earliest signs of putrefaction after death.
These, as far as I know« are the only means which science has hitherto suggested for distinguishing a living body from a corpse; and we have seen that none of them, save putrefaction, are invariably certain. In a doubtful case, therefore, time should always be allowed for this change to take place, so that the body may be interred in perfect security. If this is done under the direction of a medical attendant of ordinary information, relatives and friends may be convinced that no mistake is possible; and their plain duty is to urge this salutary delay in the very few cases where it can possibly be required.
It is particularly important to urge this delay, when necessary, in the case of persons who have apparently died of some contagious disease, and who might otherwise have been buried alive. It is indeed, much to be feared that persons in the collapse stage of cholera have been sometimes buried as dead; especially (Cardinal Donnet remarks) when they are attacked in hotels or lodgings, where a death from such a cause would be particularly prejudicial.
M. Mangin mentions one such case of a medical student in Paris, who apparently died of cholera in 1832, and for whose funeral all preparations were made, when a friend applied moxas to the spine. He recovered consciousness at once, and survived many years; and there is something grimly amusing in reading that he told the narrator: "Je me suis chauffé avec le bois de mon cercueil!" Those, again, who have read Mr. Maguire's "Life of Father Mathew," will not soon forget his graphic description of a similar case, in which Father Mathew rescued a young man from the hospital dead-house during the same epidemic at Cork, just as he was being wrapped in a tarred sheet and placed in his coffin.
Poe, in the tale from which I have quoted above, gives an instance of burial during typhus fever, probably in one of the long periods of unconsciousness and immobility occasionally occurring in that disease. The unfortunate man remained in the grave for two days, when his body was disinterred by the "body-snatchers," for the purpose of enabling his medical attendants to make a post-mortem examination. A casual application of the galvanic current revived him, and he was soon after restored to his friends, alive and in good health. This is said by Poe to have happened to a Mr. Edward Stapleton, a London solicitor, in 1831. I have been unable to obtain any verification of this marvel, but give it for what it may be worth.
It is very remarkable that the state of prolonged syncope, or trance, can sometimes be produced by a mere effort of the will. One of the best-described cases is given by St. Augustine. [Footnote 188] It is that of a priest named Restitutus, who used frequently, in order to satisfy the curiosity of friends, to make himself totally immovable, and apparently unconscious, so that he did not feel any pricking, pinching, or even burning; nor did he appear to breathe at all. He used afterward to say that "he could hear during the attack what was said very loud by bystanders, as if from afar." He brought on the attack "ad imitatas quasi lamentantis cujuslibet voces;" a sentence which is unfortunately of rather uncertain meaning. Another case is recorded by Dr. Cheyne, a fashionable Bath physician of the last century. A patient of his, one Colonel Townsend, in order to convince Dr. Cheyne's incredulity, one day voluntarily induced this state of death-like trance "by composing himself as if to sleep." He then appeared perfectly dead; and neither Dr. Cheyne nor another physician. Dr. Bayard, nor the apothecary in attendance, could detect any pulsation at the heart or wrist, or any breathing whatever. They were just about to give him up for dead, when, at the end of half an hour, he gradually recovered.
[Footnote 188: "De Civ. Dei," xiv. cap. 24. ]
But these performances are quite thrown into the shade by those of certain fakeers in India. Mr. Braid, in his very interesting "Observations on Trance, or Human Hybernation," collected several of these almost incredible tales from British officers, who spoke as having been themselves eye-witnesses of them in India. In the most wonderful of them Sir Claude Wade (formerly Resident at the court of Runjeet Singh) says that he saw a fakeer buried in an underground vault for six weeks: the body had been twice dug up by Runjeet Singh during this period, and found in the same position as when first buried. In another case, Lieutenant Boileau (in his "Narrative of a Journey in Rajwarra in 1835") relates that he saw a man buried for ten days in a grave lined with masonry and covered with large slabs of stone; and the fakeer declared his readiness to be left in the tomb for a twelvemonth. In all these cases it is said that the body, when first disinterred, was like a corpse, and no pulse could be detected at the heart or the wrist; but warmth to the head and friction of the body soon revived the bold experimenter. Supposing that the watch (which was carefully kept up during each of these curious interments) was not eluded by some of the jugglery in which Indians excel, we have here proofs that the state of trance cannot only be voluntarily induced, but prolonged over a very long time.
The rationale of such phenomena is not very difficult to comprehend. St. Augustine was undoubtedly right when he explained the case that fell under his own observation by the supposition that some persons have a remarkable and unusual power of the will over the action of the heart. Dr. Carpenter suggests that the state of syncope could be kept up much longer [{810}] in a vault in a tropical climate, where the body would not lose too much of its natural heat, than in more temperate countries; and Mr. Braid compares this condition to the slowness of respiration and circulation during winter in hybernating animals. But whatever may be the explanation, I cannot at least be accused of digression in ending this gloomy paper with an account of men who are voluntarily buried alive.