The Phantom World Part 49

[566] Goulart, loca cetata.

[567] M. Graffe, Epit. a Guil. Frabi, Centurie 2, observ chirurg. 516.

CHAPTER XLII.

INSTANCES OF DROWNED PERSONS RECOVERING THEIR HEALTH.

Here follow some instances of drowned persons[568] who came to themselves several days after they were believed to be dead. Peclin relates the story of a gardener of Troninghalm, in Sweden, who was still alive, and sixty-five years of age, when the author wrote. This man being on the ice to a.s.sist another man who had fallen into the water, the ice broke under him, and he sunk under water to the depth of eight ells, his feet sticking in the mud: he remained sixteen hours before they drew him out of the water. In this condition, he lost all sense, except that he thought he heard the bells ringing at Stockholm.

He felt the water, which entered his body, not by his mouth, but his ears. After having sought for him during sixteen hours, they caught hold of his head with a hook, and drew him out of the water; they placed him between sheets, put him near the fire, rubbed him, shook him, and at last brought him to himself. The king and court would see him and hear his story, and gave him a pension.

A woman of the same country, after having been three days in the water, was also revived by the same means as the gardener. Another person named Janas, having drowned himself at seventeen years of age, was taken out of the water seven weeks after; they warmed him, and brought him back to life.

M. D'Egly, of the Royal Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, at Paris, relates, that a Swiss, an expert diver, having plunged down into one of the hollows in the bed of the river, where he hoped to find fine fish, remained there about nine hours; they drew him out of the water after having hurt him in several places with their hooks. M.

D'Egly, seeing that the water bubbled strongly from his mouth, maintained that he was not dead. They made him throw up as much water as he could for three quarters of an hour, wrapped him up in hot linen, put him to bed, bled him, and saved him.

Some have been recovered after being seven weeks in the water, others after a less time; for instance, Gocellin, a nephew of the Archbishop of Cologne, having fallen into the Rhine, remained under water for fifteen hours before they could find him again; at the end of that time, they carried him to the tomb of St. Suitbert, and he recovered his health.[569]

The same St. Suitbert resuscitated also another young man who had been drowned several hours. But the author who relates these miracles is of no great authority.

Several instances are related of drowned persons who have remained under water for several days, and at last recovered and enjoyed good health. In the second part of the dissertation on the uncertainty of the signs of death, by M. Bruhier, physician, printed at Paris in 1744, pp. 102, 103, &c., it is shown that they have seen some who have been under water forty-eight hours, others during three days, and during eight days. He adds to this the example of the insect chrysalis, which pa.s.ses all the winter without giving any signs of life, and the aquatic insects which remain all the winter motionless in the mud; which also happens to the frogs and toads; ants even, against the common opinion, are during the winter in a death-like state, which ceases only on the return of spring. Swallows, in the northern countries, bury themselves in heaps, in the lakes and ponds, in rivers even, in the sea, in the sand, in the holes of walls, and the hollows of trees, or at the bottom of caverns; whilst other kinds of swallows cross the sea to find warmer and more temperate climes.

What has just been said of swallows being found at the bottom of lakes, ponds, and rivers, is commonly remarked in Silesia, Poland, Bohemia, and Moravia. Sometimes even storks are fished up as if dead, having their beaks fixed in the a.n.u.s of one another; many of these have been seen in the environs of Geneva, and even in the environs of Metz, in the year 1467.

To these may be added quails and herons. Sparrows and cuckoos have been found during the winter in hollow trees, torpid and without the least appearance of life, which being warmed recovered themselves and took flight. We know that hedgehogs, marmots, sloths, and serpents, live underground without breathing, and the circulation of the blood is very feeble in them during all the winter. It is even said that bears sleep during almost all that period.

Footnotes:

[568] Guill. Derham, Extrait. Peclin, c. x. de aere et alim. def.

[569] Vita S. Suitberti, apud Surium, I. Martii.

CHAPTER XLIII.

INSTANCES OF WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN BELIEVED TO BE DEAD, AND WHO HAVE COME TO LIFE AGAIN.

Very clever physicians a.s.sert[570] that in cases of the suffocation of the womb, a woman may live thirty days without breathing. I know that a very excellent woman was six-and-thirty hours without giving any sign of life. Everybody thought she was dead, and they wanted to enshroud her, but her husband always opposed it. At the end of thirty-six hours she came to herself, and has lived a long time since then. She told them that she heard very well all that was said about her, and knew that they wanted to lay her out; but her torpor was such that she could not surmount it, and she should have let them do whatever they pleased without the least resistance.

This applies to what St. Augustine says of the priest Pretextas, who in his trances and swoons heard, as if from afar off, what was said, and nevertheless would have let himself be burned, and his flesh cut, without opposing it or feeling it.

Corneille le Bruyn,[571] in his Voyages, relates that he saw at Damietta, in Egypt, a Turk whom they called the Dead Child, because when his mother was with child with him, she fell ill, and as they believed she was dead, they buried her pretty quickly, according to the custom of the country, where they let the dead remain but a very short time unburied, above all during the plague. She was put into a vault which this Turk had for the sepulture of his family.

Towards evening, some hours after the interment of this woman, it entered the mind of the Turk her husband, that the child she bore might still be alive; he then had the vault opened, and found that his wife had delivered herself, and that his child was alive, but the mother was dead. Some people said that the child had been heard to cry, and that it was on receiving intimation of this that the father had the tomb opened. This man, surnamed the Dead Child, was still living in 1677. Le Bruyn thinks that the woman was dead when her child was born; but being dead, it would not have been possible for her to bring him into the world. It must be remembered, that in Egypt, where this happened, the women have an extraordinary facility of delivery, as both ancients and moderns bear witness, and that this woman was simply shut up in a vault, without being covered with earth.

A woman at Strasburg, who was with child, being reputed to be dead, was buried in a subterranean vault;[572] at the end of some time, this vault having been opened for another body to be placed in it, the woman was found out of the coffin lying on the ground, and having between her hands a child, of which she had delivered herself, and whose arm she held in her mouth, as if she would fain eat it.

Another woman, a Spaniard,[573] the wife of Francisco Aravallos, of Sua.s.so, being dead, or believed to be so, in the last months of her pregnancy, was put in the ground; her husband, whom they had sent for from the country, whither he had gone on business, would see his wife at the church, and had her exhumed: hardly had they opened the coffin, when they heard the cry of a child, who was making efforts to leave the bosom of its mother.

He was taken away alive and lived a long time, being known by the name of the Child of the Earth; and since then he was lieutenant-general of the town of Herez, on the frontier of Spain. These instances might be multiplied to infinity, of persons buried alive, and of others who have recovered as they were being carried to the grave, and others who have been taken out of it by fortuitous circ.u.mstances. Upon this subject you may consult the new work of Messrs. Vinslow and Bruyer, and those authors who have expressly treated on this subject.[574]

These gentlemen, the doctors, derive from thence a very wise and very judicious conclusion, which is, that people should never be buried without the absolute certainty of their being dead, above all in times of pestilence, and in certain maladies in which those who are suffering under them lose on a sudden both sense and motion.

Footnotes:

[570] Le Clerc, Hist. de la Medecine.

[571] Corneille le Bruyn, tom. i. p. 579.

[572] Cronstand, Philos. veter. rest.i.t.

[573] Gaspard Rees, Campus Elysias jucund.

[574] Page 167, des additions de M. Bruhier.

CHAPTER XLIV.

CAN THESE INSTANCES BE APPLIED TO THE HUNGARIAN GHOSTS?

Some advantage of these instances and these arguments may be derived in favor of vampirism, by saying that the ghosts of Hungary, Moravia, and Poland are not really dead, that they continue to live in their graves, although without motion and without respiration; the blood which is found in them being fine and red, the flexibility of their limbs, the cries which they utter when their heart is pierced or their head being cut off, all prove that they still exist.

That is not the princ.i.p.al difficulty which arrests my judgment; it is to know how they come out of their graves without any appearance of the earth having been removed, and how they have replaced it as it was; how they appear dressed in their clothes, go and come, and eat.

If it is so, why do they return to their graves? why do they not remain amongst the living? why do they suck the blood of their relations? Why do they haunt and fatigue persons who ought to be dear to them, and who have done nothing to offend them? If all that is only imagination on the part of those who are molested, whence comes it that these vampires are found in their graves in an uncorrupted state, full of blood, supple, and pliable; that their feet are found to be in a muddy condition the day after they have run about and frightened the neighbors, and that nothing similar is remarked in the other corpses interred at the same time and in the same cemetery. Whence does it happen that they neither come back nor infest the place any more when they are burned or impaled? Would it be again the imagination of the living and their prejudices which rea.s.sure them after these executions? Whence comes it that these scenes recur so frequently in those countries, that the people are not cured of their prejudices, and daily experience, instead of destroying, only augments and strengthens them?

CHAPTER XLV.

DEAD PERSONS WHO CHEW IN THEIR GRAVES LIKE HOGS, AND DEVOUR THEIR OWN FLESH.

It is an opinion widely spread in Germany, that certain dead persons chew in their graves, and devour whatever may be close to them; that they are even heard to eat like pigs, with a certain low cry, and as if growling and grunting.

A German author,[575] named Michael Rauff, has composed a work, ent.i.tled _De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis_--"Of the Dead who Masticate in their Graves." He sets it down as a proved and sure thing, that there are certain dead persons who have devoured the linen and everything that was within reach of their mouth, and even their own flesh, in their graves. He remarks,[576] that in some parts of Germany, to prevent the dead from masticating, they place a motte of earth under their chin in the coffin; elsewhere they place a little piece of money and a stone in their mouth; elsewhere they tie a handkerchief tightly round their throat. The author cites some German writers who make mention of this ridiculous custom; he quotes several others who speak of dead people that have devoured their own flesh in their sepulchre. This work was printed at Leipsic in 1728. It speaks of an author named Philip Rehrius, who printed in 1679 a treatise with the same t.i.tle--_De Masticatione Mortuorum_.

He might have added to it the circ.u.mstance of Henry Count of Salm,[577] who, being supposed to be dead, was interred alive; they heard during the night, in the church of the Abbey of Haute-Seille, where he was buried, loud cries; and the next day, on his tomb being opened, they found him turned upon his face, whilst in fact he had been buried lying upon his back.