The Lancet has borne frequent testimony to these disasters, some of which are quoted in this volume; and, just as we are writing the closing chapter, the leading medical journal, in its issue of September 12, 1896, p. 785, records the following from its Cork correspondent as having occurred at Little Island, Ireland, which, the writer says, is thoroughly vouched for:—
“A child of four years of age contracted (typhoid) fever, and to all ordinary appearances died. The time of the funeral was appointed, and friends were actually on their way to attend it. When the supposed corpse was about to be removed from the bed to the coffin, signs of animation were exhibited. The services of the medical man were again requisitioned, and the child, opportunely rescued from such a terrible death, is now progressing satisfactorily.”
Amongst the headings of paragraphs taken from recent papers lying before me are the following:—“Buried Alive,” “A Gruesome Narrative,” “Restored to Life in a Mortuary,” “Premature Burial,” “The Dead Alive,” “Buried Alive,” “Sounds from Another Coffin,” “Mistaken for Dead,” “A Lady Nearly Buried Alive,” “Revivification After Burial,” “A Woman’s Awful Experience,” “Bolt Upright in His Coffin,” “Almost Buried while Alive,” “A Woman Buried Alive,” “The Corpse Sat Up,” “Alive in Her Coffin,” “Seemed to Rise from Death,” “Escaped Burial Alive,” “Revival at a Wake,” “Snatched from Death at the Graveside,” “Laid Out, but not Dead,” “Alive in His Grave,” “Interment before Death,” “Came to Life in the Coffin,” “Corpse Seems to Live,” “The Corpse Moved,” etc.
According to the “London Manual and Municipal Year Book,” 1896-97, there are over four hundred public authorities at work in governing London, who spend over twelve million pounds a year, and from other sources it is said that seven millions a year are collected in the Metropolis for charitable purposes, and yet there are no officials, associations, or insurance companies to safeguard the people either in this wealthy Metropolis or in any part of the United Kingdom against one of the most terrible physical calamities that can overtake any member of the human family.
EXPECTATIONS OF LIFE.
The Registrar-General’s Decennial Supplement for 1881-90, published this year (1896), includes a “Life Table” furnishing the expectations of life in England and Wales. It appears that the death-rate has fallen from 21.3 in the decade ending 1880 to 19.0 per thousand living in that ending 1890. The expectation of life at birth, according to the actuary’s standard in the decade 1871-80, was 41.3 years for males, and 44.6 years for females. This has been increased, as shown in the “Life Table” 1881-90, to 43.6 for males, and 47.2 for females, mainly through sanitary amelioration. A perceptible increase, the author believes, could be shown if steps were taken to restore still-born children, who constitute about five per cent. of births, and if the same trouble were adopted to restore the apparently dead from other diseases (which are sometimes only crises of repose after wasting disease) as is generally taken with respect to those accidentally poisoned or drowned. Besides reducing the mortality and increasing the expectation of life, such a reform would greatly diminish the appalling suffering of those who, through our apathy and ignorance, are, under our present system of laissez faire, consigned to precipitate interment, and would bring tranquillity of mind to those who are haunted all their lives through fear of such a catastrophe. Why we should limit our efforts at restoration of those apparently dead to a few cases has never been shown, and is surely a serious oversight, which should be remedied without delay.
Dr. Hartmann, in “Premature Burial,” observes—“As by cleaning a dusty watch the watchmaker causes the hindrances to be removed which prevented the energy stored up in the watch from setting the clockwork in motion, so, in cases of apparent death from catalepsy, asphyxia, syncope, and other diseases causing obstacles to the manifestation of the life-energy in the body, these obstacles may be removed by appropriate means, such as are known to many intelligent physicians, and the energy of life being latent in the physical form may be enabled to manifest itself again when the harmony of the organism has been sufficiently restored, even after the heart has entirely ceased to beat.”
Dr. A. Fothergill says:—“Since no one, from prince to peasant, can at all times be secure from these dreadful disasters, which suddenly suspend vital action; and since medical practitioners themselves are not exempt, it surely becomes them to use every exertion to improve the art of restoring animation. May each progressive step in this interesting path of science tend to that great object! and may every laudable attempt undertaken with that benevolent view enable us with more certainty to preserve life and to diminish the sum of human infelicity!”