“The celebrated actress Mlle. Rachel died at Paris, on 4th January, 1858. After the process of embalming her body had already begun, she awoke from her trance, but died ten hours afterwards owing to the injuries that had been inflicted upon her.”
The Celestial City, New York, June 15, 1889, records:—
“MRS. BISHOP’S EXPERIENCE.
“Mrs. Eleanor Fletcher Bishop, the mother of the celebrated mind-reader, has a thrilling experience of her own regarding the horrors of being railroaded into the grave. Anent the unseemly haste exercised by the doctors who made the autopsy on her son, the old lady stated what terrible perils she at one time barely escaped. ‘I am subject to the same cataleptic trances in which my boy often fell,’ said Mrs. Bishop. ‘One can see and hear everything, but speech and movement are paralyzed. It is horrible. For six days, some years ago, I was in a trance, and saw arrangements being made for my funeral. Only my brother’s determined resistance prevented them from embalming me, and I lay there and heard it all. On the seventh day I came to myself, but the agony I endured left its mark forever.’”
Dr. P. J. Gibbons, M.A., says:—
“In my mind there is no doubt that bodies in which life is not extinct are embalmed. To prevent the embalming of live bodies in cases where doubt exists, my method for resuscitation should be resorted to. If success does not follow, death has taken place. When one in whom the vital spark may possibly not yet have fled is found, two objects should be aimed at, viz., first, to restore breathing, and, second, to promote warmth and circulation.”—The Casket, Rochester, New York, April 1, 1895.
The Select Committee of the House of Commons appointed in 1893 to enquire into the subject of Death Certification, suggests in their report that in all cases where it is desired to embalm a dead body an authorisation should be obtained from the Home Secretary. This is probably intended to prevent concealing cases of death by poisoning. The Select Committee might very well have extended its recommendations to the need of verifying the death before the embalmer was allowed to exercise his art on the subject. Legislation in the United States, where embalming is extensively practised among well-to-do people, is a matter of urgent necessity. The author is aware of only one town where the city ordinance enforces such verification before permitting burial.
Mr. M. Cooper, surgeon, in his admirable little volume “The Uncertainty of the Signs of Death,” London, 1746, p. 196, observes that “those who are dissected run no risk of being interred alive. The operation is an infallible means to secure them from so terrible a fate. This is one advantage which persons dissected have over those who are, without any further ceremony, shut up in their coffins.”
PREMATURE AUTOPSIES.
The following from Ogston’s Medical Jurisprudence, p. 370, is a case in point (quoted by the Lancet):—“In October, 1840, a servant girl, who had retired to bed apparently in perfect health, was found the following morning, as it appeared, dead. A surgeon who was called pronounced her to have been dead for some hours. A coroner’s inquest was summoned for four o’clock, and the reporter and the surgeon who had been called in to the girl were ordered to inspect the body previous to its sitting. On proceeding to the house for this purpose at two o’clock, the inspectors found the girl lying in bed in an easy posture, her face pallid, but placid and composed, as if she were in a deep sleep, while the heat of the body had not diminished. A vein was opened by them, and various stimuli applied, but without affording any sign of resuscitation. After two hours of hesitation and delay, a message being brought that the jury were waiting for their evidence, they were forced to proceed to the inspection. In moving the body for this purpose, the warmth and pliancy of the limbs were such as to give the examiners the idea that they had to deal with a living subject! The internal cavities, as they proceeded, were found so warm that a very copious steam issued from them on exposure. All the viscera were in a healthy state, and nothing was detected which could throw the smallest light on the cause of this person’s death.” Tidy (Legal Medicine), part i., p. 140, remarks thereon—“A mistake had no doubt been made in this case, as its warmth was not caused by decomposition.”