EFFECTS OF INTENSE COLD.
M. Charles Londe, in “La Mort Apparente,” p. 16, says:—“Intense cold, coincident with privations and fatigue, will produce all the phenomena of apparent death—phenomena susceptible of prolongation during several days without producing actual death, and consequently exposing the individual who could be restored to life to living burial;” and he further maintains it as an indisputable fact that every day people are thus interred alive.
Struve, in his essay on “Suspended Animation,” p. 140, says:—“In no case whatever is the danger of committing homicide greater than in the treatment of persons who have suffered by severe cold. Their death-like state may deceive our judgment, not only because such persons continue longest apparently dead, but because the want of susceptibility of irritation is in many cases not distinguishable from real death. A man benumbed with cold burnt his feet, and had continued insensible to pain, nor did he feel this sensation till he warmed them at a fire. In this case it is evident that the susceptibility of irritation was destroyed, while vital power remained.”
INFLUENZA.
This is a malady that has been enormously rife all over the world during the past few years, and has baffled the efforts of physicians and sanitarians to arrest its progress: it is sometimes accompanied by conditions which can hardly be distinguished from catalepsy.
The Lancet, May 31, 1890, page 1215, gives the following:—
“CATALEPSY AS A SEQUELA OF INFLUENZA.
“The neurotic sequelæ of influenza seem engaging more attention abroad than at home, probably from their symptoms being more pronounced than on this side the Channel. ‘Nonna,’ as it is called, if something more than the somnolence succeeding the exhaustion of influenza, has been thought in Upper Italy to have much in common with catalepsy—one case, indeed, amounting to the ‘apparent death’ of Pacini. This is reported from Como. The patient, Pasquale Ossola by name, had to all appearance died, and a certificate to that effect, after due consultation, was drawn up and signed. Already it wanted but an hour or so to the interment, when the ‘corpse’ began to move spontaneously and to exhibit signs of returning life. The relatives of the supposed dead man at once called in assistance, and though animation and consciousness, even to recognition, were restored, the resuscitation was not maintained, and the patient died. Fortunately, the funeral had been arranged on the traditional lines, and the faint chance of return to life was not extinguished by cremation.”