A number of cases of apparent death that have survived—where there was strangulation from a scarf, as in this case—have been reported. The explanation in such cases is, that the pressure of the scarf around the neck keeps the venous blood from flowing down from the brain through the jugular veins, and the brain, in consequence, becomes saturated with carbonic acid gas from the detained venous blood, and a death-like stupor caused by carbonic acid poisoning ensues. Artificial respiration would, it is believed, restore such persons to consciousness.
AN UNDERTAKER’S EXPERIENCE.
A leading West End undertaker, whose letter is before me, writes under date of June 26, 1896, as follows:—“In my experience I have had but one case come under my personal observation where I had real uncertainty as to death being actually present, and that was an instance of the kind in which this calamity is only likely, in my opinion, to occur. A girl who had been to work in Borwick’s factory apparently fainted and died, and within a few days the friends buried her. When we came to close the coffin, there was no evidence of death, and we did not close it without having a doctor sent for, and receiving his assurance that she was dead. When reading the fatal cases which have come to light upon this subject, I must confess to looking back upon that instance with much fear, and it is but a poor consolation to me that the responsibility was not mine, but the medical man’s.”
The foregoing cases are recorded because they are types of a class that nearly every physician, undertaker, clergyman, or other observer has met with or heard of, and the probabilities, having regard to the existing confusion and uncertainty of opinion on the signs of death, are on the side of apparent rather than real death. On the other hand, a medical correspondent informs the author that he is sceptical as to the reported cases of narrow escapes, as on more than one occasion his efforts to verify the facts have proved abortive. It must be admitted that there are difficulties in the way of such inquiries. If the subject of trance, or narrow escape from burial, is a lady, publicity injures her prospects of marriage, and, if a young man, his reputation for business stability is endangered or prejudiced, so that this reticence on the part of relatives is hardly surprising. Such persons do not like their gruesome and unpleasant experiences to be talked about.
CHAPTER VIII.
PREDISPOSING CAUSES AND CONDITIONS OF DEATH-COUNTERFEITS.
Those who are most subject to the various forms of death-counterfeit are persons whose vocations exhaust the nervous force faster than the natural powers of recuperation, and who resort to narcotics and stimulants to counteract the consequent physical depression. Dr. Alex. Wilder, in his “Perils of Premature Burial,” London, E. W. Allen, p. 19, says:—“We exhaust our energies by overwork, by excitement, too much fatigue of the brain, the use of tobacco, and sedatives or anæsthetics, and by habits and practices which hasten the Three Sisters in spinning the fatal thread. Apoplexy, palsy, epilepsy, are likely to prostrate any of us at any moment, and catalepsy, perhaps, is not very far from any of us.” Equally, if not even more likely, to be overtaken by these simulacra of death are the poor—the ill-fed, ill-conditioned, and overworked classes.
With regard to the causation of catalepsy, Dr. W. R. Gowers, in Quain’s “Dictionary of Medicine,” p. 216, says:—“Nervous exhaustion is the common predisponent; and emotional disturbance, especially religious excitement, or sudden alarm, and blows on the head and back, are frequent immediate causes. It occasionally occurs in the course of mental affections, and especially melancholia, and as an early symptom of epilepsy.”