The Philosophy of Mystery

by Walter Cooper Dendy

Astr. You confess the wonder, Evelyn, that is some concession; you may, perchance, believe another of equal interest.

“My mother being sick to death of a fever three months after I was born, which was the occasion she nursed me no longer, her friends and servants thought, to all outward appearance, she was dead, and so almost two days and a night. But Dr. Winston coming to comfort my father, went into my mother’s room, and looking earnestly in her face, said, ‘She is so handsome, and looks so lovely, I cannot think she is dead;’ and suddenly took a lancet out of his pocket, and with it cut the sole of her foot, which bled. Upon this he immediately caused her to be laid upon the bed again, and to be rubbed, and such means, as she came to life, and opening her eyes, saw two of her kinswomen stand by her, my Lady Knolleys and my Lady Russell, both with great wide sleeves, as the fashion then was, and said, ‘Did not you promise me fifteen years, and are you come again?’ which they not understanding, persuaded her to keep her spirits quiet in that great weakness wherein she then was; but some hours after she desired my father and Dr. Howlsworth might be left alone with her, to whom she said, ‘I will acquaint you, that during the time of my trance I was in great quiet, but in a place I could neither distinguish or describe; but the sense of leaving my girl, who is dearer to me than all my children, remained a trouble upon my spirits. Suddenly I saw two by me clothed in long white garments, and methought I fell down upon my face upon the dust, and they asked me why I was so troubled in so great happiness. I replied, O let me have the same grant given to Hezekiah, that I may live fifteen years, to see my daughter a woman; to which they answered, It is done, and then at that instant I awoke out of my trance.’ And Dr. Howlsworth did then affirm that that day she died made just fifteen years from that time.”

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.