Chapter XIII: Part 13

CAST. Evelyn, you have again bewildered my thoughts. Sleep, that should be the _anodyne_ of the mind, has awakened afresh my curiosity. I am in a mood for mystery. Any more wonders?

EV. The prototypes of sleep, dear Castaly, are _all_ “mysteries,” as _you_ call them, and marked by ever-varying shades.

The most impressive conditions of the mind are these:

Unconscious and passive, as in _sound sleep_.

Conscious yet passive, as in _dreaming_.

Conscious and willing, yet powerless, as in _night-mare_.

Unconscious yet active, as in _somnambulism_.

If we go deeper in our analysis, we shall discover a state more wondrous still than all we have unravelled, in which mind is unconscious, sensationless, unwishing, motionless, powerless, as in _trance_ or _catalepsy_; an absolute apathy of body and complete oblivion of mind. _And yet life is there!_

In the dream of night-mare, you remember, there is a will, but no power. In the absolute senselessness of trance, all sympathy between the brain or spinal marrow, or the influence of the nerves of motion, or of the will on muscle, _altogether cease_.

I will not fatigue you with _varieties_, such as _carus_, _catalepsy_, and the like, or with mere medical definitions, as _syncope_ or fainting, epilepsy, apoplexy, and _their_ analogies.

By the term trance I would define all those conditions in which there is protracted _derangement of volition_ or the will; sensibility and voluntary action being suspended, while the _vital functions_ are performed, yet with diminished energy; the “deep sleep” of Paracelsus, Hieronymus Fabricius, Celsus, and other writers of antiquity.

In some the rosy colour of the lips and cheeks will not fade; in others, they are pale and bloodless; the body becomes cold as marble, the pulse often imperceptible, and the vapour of breathing on a polished surface alone distinguishes the still living being from the perfect work of the sculptor. I have, however, had patients who were rosy when they fell asleep, but became pale about the end of the second day.

Girls often smile sweetly in full catalepsy, but the countenance will become anxious as waking approaches; and this must ever excite suspicion. The body indeed is, to the external world, _dead_; for although the cataleptic will often swallow food, while all the other muscles are in spasm, this may, I believe _does_, depend on mere _irritability_, by which, as I before told you, the brain is first excited, and then directs a movement without the mind’s feeling. Catalepsy is so peculiar to young females of extreme sensibility, that it may be considered an intense _hysteria_, depending on certain _sympathies_, or resulting from sudden or powerful influences on the passions. The form of catalepsy marked by _hysteria_ is least dangerous; but it is very stubborn. Probably this is the form so common in Germany.

Previous to the _cataleptic acme_ girls are often maniacally violent, and will then suddenly regain their temper and their reason. They will sit and play with their fingers in a sullen mood, and the power of motion and speech and other acts of volition may be alternately impaired or lost. In some, the sleep has been preceded by fits of lethargy, by lassitude, and inaptitude to exertion, and perhaps a propensity to sleep-walking. The decided state of catalepsy has begun in an epileptic convulsion. In all, I think, I have seen combined with this disorder, irregular determination of blood; in one case, where the taste and smell were gone for four or five months, the climax was suicide by arsenic.

The countenance is almost always placid in cataleptic sleep; the eyes being turned up, the pupils dilated, but the eyelids closed. If the fit be the result of _sudden_ fright, the features will remain as they were at that moment—the eyelid fixed, but the pupil usually sensible. The joints and muscles are pliable, and may be moulded to any form, but they remain in that position as rigidly fixed as the limbs of a clay figure, or the _anchylosed_ joints of the self-torturing fakir; insensible to all stimuli, beating, tickling, or pricking.

I have seen patients lapse into a state of catalepsy, _in a moment_, without a struggle. I remember, during one of my visits to the asylum in Hoxton, a maniac, who often in the midst of his occupation became instantaneously _a statue_; leaning a little forward, one arm lifted up, and the _index_ finger pointed as at some interesting object; the eye staring and ghastly, and the whole expression as of one rapt in an ecstacy of thought or vision.

The waking from a trance, like the recovery from the _asphyxia_ of drowning, is painful. It is attended with a struggle, and the hand is almost invariably placed firmly _over the heart_, as if its actions were a painful effort to overcome _congestion_.

In some cases, indeed, a purple hue will suddenly suffuse the cataleptic body; the limbs are then extremely rigid, but become pliant when the healthy tint is restored.

The sensation in the brain of the cataleptic, as of those recovering from drowning, resembles the pricking of needles, the circulation soon becoming accelerated. Hunger is usually intense when the patient awakes. The usual duration of catalepsy is from twenty to forty hours. The return of volition is commonly marked by perspiration; this premonitory sign is often followed by a piercing shriek, as in the case of night-mare, and, indeed, in a _slight_ degree, of an infant’s cry as soon as it is born.

It has appeared to me that the cataleptic is marked by _extremes_ of feeling and disposition. The sensibility either being too dull for the feeling of joy, or so intensely excited by pleasure, as to approach the confine of delirium. One of my patients, in particular, who was an eighty-hour sleeper, endured a metamorphosis from religious enthusiasm to theatrical mania. Her Bible was discarded for romances and play-books, and even the most licentious volumes.

CAST. I have read, (I suppose in some moth-eaten tomes enshrined I know not where,) of a scholar of Lubeck, who slept seven years; in Diogenes Laertius, of Epimenides, who slept fifty-one years in a cave; in Ricaut, of the seven devoted sleepers of Ephesus (the same, I presume, as the seven illustrious sleepers of Mahomet’s tale in the Koran); and of the _Leucomorians_, who fall asleep with the swallows early in November, and wake at the end of April.

One moment more among the legends of romance. In the “Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels” it is written, that in a dark cavern of the Baltic, there were discovered five men in Roman habits, so deeply sleeping, that all efforts to awaken them were unavailing.

Ogier the Dane is _now_ sleeping in the dungeon of Cronenburg Castle—(so recordeth the “_Danske Folk Saga_.”)

Prince Arthur, too, was lying, when a chronicle was writ, in a trance at Avelon; and the Britons, with implicit belief, were watching for his awaking.

Years have passed since these mysterious legends were penned, and I dare not say that the spells are broken yet.

EV. If they _then_ slept, sweet Castaly, they are surely sleeping _now_. Tales lose nothing by telling, and nature is often thus magnified into a miracle. You may however _believe_ this, that a _periodical_ catalepsy with intervals may last even for years. The “Memoirs of the Academy of Berlin” record the case of a woman, who sunk into catalepsy twice a day for many years; during which period she was married, and became the almost unconscious mother of children.

Nay, there is a story of Mynheer Vander Gucht, of Bremen, who, with very brief intermissions, slept and dreamt for thirty years; so that, on the return of travellers by sea or land, the primal question was, if _Mr. Vander Gucht was up_!

IDA. Catalepsy, I believe, has been often _feigned_; and, although it is astonishing with what apathy pain may be endured, the imposture, I presume, may be usually discovered by the proposition of some horrible remedy.

EV. Frequently; but many impostors have withstood the test, and triumphed in their deception. Yet it is true that the perfect state of catalepsy has been, in very rare instances, voluntarily produced; thus exhibiting the complete influence of will over an _involuntary muscle, the heart_.

The case of Colonel Townsend I adduce, as one of undoubted authority. This officer was able to suspend the action both of his heart and lungs, after which he became motionless, icy cold, and rigid,—a glassy film overspreading his eyes. As there was no breathing, there was no vapour _apparent_ on the glass, when held to his mouth. During the many hours in which this voluntary trance existed, there was a total absence of consciousness, yet a _faculty of self-reanimation_!

Avicenna speaks of one that could “cast himself into a palsie when he list;” and Celsus, of a priest that could “separate himself from his senses when he list, and lie like a dead man, void of life and sense.” Cardan, the Pavian astrologer, brags of himself that _he_ could do as much, and that “when he list.”

Dr. Cleghorn, of Glasgow, relates the case of a man who could stop the pulse at his wrist, and reduce himself to the condition of syncope, _by his will_, of course.

Barton, the holy maid of Kent, was enabled thus to “absorb her faculties.”

Restitutus, a presbyter, could also throw himself into a trance,—being insensible, except to the very loudest sounds. So says Augustin.

ASTR. So that there may not be much imposture in the case, recorded in the “Spectator,” of Nicholas Hart, a professor of somnolency, who _lived by sleeping_. The following is his advertisement in the “Daily Courant,” of that time:—

“Nicholas Hart, who slept last year in Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital, intends to sleep this year at the ‘Cock and Bottle,’ in Little Britain.”

I will freely confess to you, Evelyn, my scepticism as to these _ultra_ romantic legends; but may my own memory fail me not, while I relate a few strange stories, and demand of yourself confirmation.

Euphemia Lindsay, of Forfarshire, slept eight weeks, having taken nothing but (possibly) a little cold water. In the eighth week she died.

Angelica Vlies, of Delft, had fasted in a state of insensibility from 1822 to 1828. She took nothing but water, tea, and whey, and these in the most minute quantities.

In a record, A.D. 1545, I read that “William Foxley, a pot-maker to the Mint in London, slept in the Tower of London (not being by any means to be waked) fourteen days and fifteen nights; and, when he waked, it seemed to him that the interval was but as one night.”

Samuel Clinton, of Timbury, near Bath, often slept for a month; and once, from April to August. He would, during this period, suddenly wake, but ere food could be administered to him, he lapsed again into a trance.

Margaret Lyall (of Edinburgh) slept from the morning of June 27th to the evening of the 30th, then from July 1st to August 8th. Her breathing was scarcely perceptible, and her pulse low; one arm was sensitive, the other senseless, to the pricking of pins. She had never any subsequent cognizance of this sleep.

A lady, at Nismes, had periodical attacks of trance; and it is curious that the intervals of waking were always of the same duration as the previous time of sleeping, however these might vary.

In the year 1738, Elizabeth Orvin slept for four days; and, for the period of ten years afterwards, passed seventeen hours of the twenty-four in sleep. No stimuli were powerful enough to rouse her: _acupuncturation_, flagellation, and even the stinging of bees were ineffectual. Like many other somnolents, she was morose and irritable, especially previous to the sleeping-fit.

“Elizabeth Parker, of Morley Saint Peter, in Norfolk, for a considerable time was very irregular in her times of waking, which was once in seven days; after which they became irregular and precarious, and though of shorter duration, they were equally profound; and every attempt at keeping her awake, or waking her, was vain. Various experiments were tried, and an itinerant empiric, elated with the hope of rousing her from what he called _counterfeit sleep_, blew into her nostrils the powder of white hellebore; but the poor creature remained insensible to the inhumanity of the deed, which, instead of producing the boasted effect, excoriated the skin of her nose, lips, and face.”

The records of medicine, I doubt not, may add a volume to these simple stories, and, perchance, may unfold to us something of the exciting causes which have induced these strange conditions; yet they seem to me so various, in some the effect being so sudden, in others so gradual, that it were vain for _me_ to conjecture.

EV. The influence of fear, and fright, and extreme joy, will often produce instantaneous _paralysis_; while that of intense study, or anxiety, will steal on by degrees; and then, while in some cases the senses will be entirely _apathetic_, in others, they will be acutely _excited_.

Mendelssohn almost every evening immediately fell into a trance whenever “philosophy” was even _named_ in his presence; and so acutely deranged was then his conception of sound, that a voice of stentorian force seemed to ring in his ears, repeating to him any impressive conversation he had heard during the day.

Without presuming to satisfy Astrophel in explaining the full pathology of these curious cases, I may, by analogy, illustrate his question by alluding to the acute influence which impressions exert on the mind, and, through it, on the body.

Captain D——, on service in Ceylon, was ordered to march to the Kandian territory. This district had been the grave of many officers who had resided in it. From this circumstance, and the anticipation of a similar fatality to himself, he became speechless, and died in fifty hours.

During the plague of Egypt, lots were drawn for a decision as to what surgeon should remain with the sick on the departure of the troops. Mr. Dick, the army inspector, relates that on one occasion the surgeon on whom the lot fell dropped dead.

In the treaty with Meer Jaffier, Colonel Clive omitted the name of the Gentoo merchant, Omichund. This man was induced to expect treasures to the amount of one million, for his aid in deposing the Bengal nabob. From this disappointment he became speechless, and subsequently insane.

George Grokatski, a Polish soldier, deserted. He was discovered a few days after, drinking and merry-making. On his court-martial he became speechless, unconscious, and fixed as a statue. For twenty days and nights he lay in this trance, without nourishment; he then sunk and died.

Some girls (as we read in Platerus) playing near a gibbet, one wantonly flung stones at the criminal suspended on it. Being violently struck the body _swung_, and the girl, believing that it was alive, and was descending from the gibbet, fell into violent convulsions and died.

The following case, although not fatal, very powerfully displays the paralyzing effects of imagination.

A lady in perfect health, twenty-three years of age, was asked by the parents of a friend to be present at a severe surgical operation. On consideration, it was thought wrong to expose her to such a scene, and the operation was postponed for a few hours. She went to bed, however, with the imagination highly excited, and awoke in alarm hearing, or thinking she heard, the shrieks of her friend under the agony of an operation. Convulsions and hysterics supervened, and, on their subsiding, she went into a profound sleep, which continued sixty-three hours. The most eminent of the faculty were then consulted, and she was cupped, which awoke her; but the convulsions returned, and she again went to sleep, and slept, with few intermissions, for a fortnight. The irregular periods continued for ten or twelve years; the length of the sleeping fits from thirty to forty hours. Then came on irritability, and total want of sleep, for three months; her usual time for sleeping being then forty-eight hours.

But if the sudden transition be _excess of joy_, its effect may be equally melancholy.

Wescloff was detained as a hostage by the Kalmucs, and carried along with them in their memorable flight to China. His widowed mother had mourned him dead, and, on his sudden return, the excess of joy was instantaneously fatal.

In the year 1544 the Jewish pirate, Sinamus Taffurus, was lying in a port of the Red Sea, called Orsenoe, and was preparing for war, being then engaged in one with the Portuguese. While he was there he received the unexpected intelligence that his son (who in the siege of Tunis had been made prisoner by Barbarossa, and by him doomed to slavery) was suddenly ransomed, and coming to his aid with seven ships, well armed. He was immediately struck as if with apoplexy, and expired on the spot.

A Swiss student, writes Zimmerman, yielded himself to intense metaphysical study, which gradually produced a complete trance of the senses; the functions of the body being not inactive. After the lapse of a year of apparent idiocy, each sense was successively excited by its proper stimulus; the ear by loud sounds, &c. When these were restored, the mind was again perfect, although in this effort his strength was nearly exhausted.

I may add that lunar influence, though it is now somewhat out of fashion, was formerly believed even by so sage a physician as Dr. Mead and others, and Astrophel will thank me for blending with his own examples the following case of catalepsy in a moon-struck maiden. At the full of the moon this damsel fell in a fit; the recurrence obeying the regular periods of the tide. During the flood she lay in a speechless trance, and revived from it on the ebb. Her father was engaged on the Thames, and so struck was he with the regularity of these attacks, that on his return from the river he correctly anticipated the condition of his daughter; and even in the night he has arisen to his work, as her cries on recovering from the fit were always a correct monitor to him of the turning of the tide.

PREMATURE INTERMENT.—RESUSCITATION.

“Oh sleep! thou ape of death, lie dull upon her;
And be her sense but as a monument,
Thus in a chapel lying.”
CYMBELINE.

“Sleep may usurp on nature many hours.”
PERICLES.

IDA. These stories are, indeed, painfully interesting; but tell us, Evelyn, is it so certain that the shaft of Azrael had irretrievably struck these unhappy creatures of whom you speak? Is it not to be feared that instances of premature sepulture have too often occurred from want of scientific discernment? On the exhumation of the Cimetière des Innocents at Paris, during the Napoleon dynasty, the skeletons were many of them discovered in attitudes indicating a struggling to get free: indeed some, we are assured, were partly out of their coffins.

To avert this awful catastrophe it was the custom, in the provinces of Germany, to place a bell-rope in the hand of a corpse for twenty-four hours before burial. We may look on this, perhaps, as one natural source of _romance_ and mystery; for the ringing of bells by the dead has been a favourite omen of the ghostly legends.

EV. Alas! even my own professional study and duties have not been free from these melancholy scenes; and if I make not your gentle heart to tremble, fair Castaly, I will recount some of those unhappy instances of fatality, to which the errors and neglect of man may doom his fellow-mortal.

Miss C—— (of C—— Hall, in Warwickshire,) and her brother were the subjects of typhoid fever. She seemed to die, and her bier was placed in the family vault. In a week her brother died also, and when he was taken to the tomb, the lady was found _sitting in her grave-clothes_ on the steps of the vault; having, after her waking from the trance, died of terror or exhaustion.

A girl, after repeated faintings, was apparently dead, and was taken, as a subject, into the anatomical theatre of the “Salpetrière,” at Paris. During the night, faint groans were heard in the theatre, but no search was made. In the morning, it was evident that the girl had _attempted to disengage herself from the winding-sheet_, one leg being thrust from off the trestles, and an arm resting on an adjoining table.

A slave girl of Canton, named Leaning, apparently died. She was placed in a coffin, the lid of which remained unfastened, that her parents might come and see the corpse. Three days after the apparent death, while the remains were being conveyed to the grave, a noise or voice was heard proceeding from the coffin, and on removing the covering, it was found the woman had come to life again.

In 1838, at Tonnieus, in the Lower Garonne, as the graveman threw earth on a coffin he also heard groans. Much terrified, he ran away, and a crowd assembled. On opening the coffin, the face of the buried man was distorted, and he had disengaged his arms from the folds of his winding sheet.

The Emperor Zeno was, as it is written, prematurely buried; and, when the body was soon after casually discovered, it was found that he had, to satisfy acute hunger, _eaten some flesh from his arm_.

ASTR. One might think that Master Ainsworth, from this record, sketched the episode of the sexton and the old coffin in his “Rookwood.” The truth is equal to the fiction.

CAST. When I was at Breslau, in 1835, (and this is not one of Astrophel’s fictions,) a nun of the Ursuline Convent was placed in her coffin in the church. At midnight, the sisters assembled to chaunt the vigils over the body of their sainted sister. While the holy hymn was echoing through the oratory, the nun arose, tottered to the altar, knelt before the cross, and prayed. The sisters with a cry of horror awoke the abbess; and on her arrival, the nun again arose, and lay down in her coffin. The physician of the convent was speedily summoned, but, on his arrival, _he found her dead_.

There can scarcely be drawn a scene, combining the sublime and beautiful of romance, in higher intensity than this. It was the spectral visitation of a seraph.

IDA. Like many sublimities of nature, these mysteries have been profaned by unholy imitation; as for instance, the reanimation of the nuns in the opera of “Robert le Diable.” But there is an awful romance mingled with the history of those melancholy creatures, from whose inanimate clay the immortal spirit was thought to have parted, still more impressive. That instinctive, that inexpressible dread, with which we contemplate a corpse, is nothing in comparison with that thrill of astonishment which overwhelms us, when a body becomes (as in the miraculous recall of Lazarus) _reanimated_; when a spirit appears to visit us from the dead. Yet this is not _fear_, for we know it cannot injure us; it is a feeling that we are with something beyond ourselves spiritual, which had seemed to have endured a transfiguration, and been admitted into the order of angelic beings. There must be something of the supernatural which creates this fearful wonder; an impression on the heart that is an especial influence of the Deity. Else should we not behold with _dread_, instead of a sacred _pleasure_, the success of our efforts in cases of suspended animation?

This visitation from another world is one of the surest indications of our spirituality; and like the reanimation of soul and mind, and consciousness, from deep and undreaming sleep, lighting up the body into brilliancy and beauty, might drown a sceptic’s reasoning in a flood of holy faith, and overwhelm him with the belief of immortality.

CAST. It is this combination of vitality and death—so seemingly a paradox—that forms the basis of many of our deepest romances; as the “Spectre Life in Death,” in the Ancient Mariner, of the melancholy Coleridge,—himself a wild visionary of the first order. If I remember, he is writing of a spectre ship.—

——“Betwixt us and the sun.

And straight the sun was fleck’d with bars—
(Heaven’s mother send us grace!)
As if through a dungeon-grate he peer’d
With broad and burning face.
Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud,)
How fast she neers and neers.
Are those _her_ sails that glance in the sun,
Like restless gossameres?

Are those _her_ ribs, through which the sun
Doth peer, as through a grate?
And is that woman all her crew?
Is that a Death—and are there two?
Is Death that woman’s mate?

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold,
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The night-mare Life in Death was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.”

EV. It is melancholy that a noble mind should be so perverted by poppy-juice. And yet the Mahometan beats him hollow at this sort of burlesque.

There is a fiction in Sale’s notes to the “Koran.” During the building of his magnificent temple, King Solomon sleeps in death. He remains supported by his staff, on which he had been leaning, until a worm eats away the prop, and the body falls prostrate to the ground.

But we need not go to the East for our specimens. Even in the year 1839, in our Emerald Isle of superstition, they would have us believe a miracle of this kind.

In a field near Lurgan, a man, called Farland, had received money from a widow, wherewith to pay her rent;—this he failed to do. On her remonstrance and declaration, she was asked to name her witnesses. She answered,—“No one but God and herself.” “Then,” rejoined the man, “your God was asleep at the time.” The attestation of three witnesses records, that he was instantly struck in a trance as he was resting on his spade, and in that attitude he had ever since continued!

CAST. And is it not a blot on the page of science, that so many ill-fated creatures are thus, through an error, doomed to dissolution? Say, gentle Evelyn, has not your philosophy discovered some mode of discernment between life and death, which would smile the philanthropist on to patient watching?

EV. To a degree. But it were vain to offer here precepts for such discrimination, which, sooth to say, are not yet absolute. The rosy tint of complexion may remain for some time, and even perspiration may break forth, _after death_; or the body may assume the _most deathlike_ aspect, and yet vitality is only _in abeyance_. Among our recoveries, it is true, there are many _spontaneous_ rousings, and this especially if deep impression has been the cause of trance.

Listen to the following, from a journal of 1834:—“The wife of Thomas Benson, livery-lace maker, of Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, being suddenly taken ill, to all appearance expired; and, when every symptom of life had fled, the body was duly laid out. On the following night, between nine and ten o’clock, whilst the undertaker was in the house receiving instructions for the funeral, to the astonishment and terror of the whole family, Mrs. Benson came down stairs, having been in a trance nearly thirty hours. Her situation has so terribly shocked her, that but faint hopes are entertained of her recovery.”

It is melancholy to know how often these cases are abandoned _to nature_; but science may do much, and _should do_ more, to relieve them; although we possess not the wondrous phial of Renatus, nor have developed the creative mysteries of Prometheus or Frankenstein.

Yet the recovery of François de Civille, was almost as great a wonder. He was thrown, at the siege of Rouen, into insensibility. He was, in this state, carried home by his servant. During a week he became warm, but exhibited no other sign of life. He was, at this period, flung out of a window by the besiegers, and cast upon a dunghill, where he lay naked for three or four days. Yet, even after this, he was restored to life.

ASTR. You confess the _wonder_, Evelyn, that is some concession; you may, perchance, believe another of equal interest.

“My mother being sick to death of a fever three months after I was born, which was the occasion she nursed me no longer, her friends and servants thought, to all outward appearance, she was dead, and so almost two days and a night. But Dr. Winston coming to comfort my father, went into my mother’s room, and looking earnestly in her face, said, ‘She is so handsome, and looks so lovely, I cannot think she is dead;’ and suddenly took a lancet out of his pocket, and with it cut the sole of her foot, which bled. Upon this he immediately caused her to be laid upon the bed again, and to be rubbed, and such means, as she came to life, and opening her eyes, saw two of her kinswomen stand by her, my Lady Knolleys and my Lady Russell, both with great wide sleeves, as the fashion then was, and said, ‘Did not you promise me fifteen years, and are you come again?’ which they not understanding, persuaded her to keep her spirits quiet in that great weakness wherein she then was; but some hours after she desired my father and Dr. Howlsworth might be left alone with her, to whom she said, ‘I will acquaint you, that during the time of my trance I was in great quiet, but in a place I could neither distinguish or describe; but the sense of leaving my girl, who is dearer to me than all my children, remained a trouble upon my spirits. Suddenly I saw two by me clothed in long white garments, and methought I fell down upon my face upon the dust, and they asked me why I was so troubled in so great happiness. I replied, O let me have the same grant given to Hezekiah, that I may live fifteen years, to see my daughter a woman; to which they answered, It is done, and then at that instant I awoke out of my trance.’ And Dr. Howlsworth did then affirm that that day she died made just fifteen years from that time.”

I remember a story of the effect of deep impression on a sensitive mind: the sleep of a love-sick Juliet, without the entrancing draught of the friar.

A young French lady in the Rue St. Honoré, at Paris, was condemned by her father to a hated marriage while her heart was devoted to another. She fell into a trance, and was buried. Under some strange influence her lover opened her grave, and she was revived, and married. Thus the romance of the “Beauty of Verona” was acted without its tragedy.

I have heard, but where I recollect not, a story of another French lady, who was actually the subject of an anatomist. On the evidence of some faint signs of vitality, he not only restored the lady to life, but united himself to her in marriage.

There is no doubt, also, that Rachael, Lady Russell, would have been buried alive, had not the devoted affection of her husband, and his constant visits to her coffin, prevented it.

I read, too, that Shorigny, an hysterical girl in Paris, was watched daily by her physician, after he was assured by the friends that she was dead. On the sixth day, the cloth covering was seen to move, the eyes soon after opened, and she gradually recovered.

EV. It is one of the anomalies of our science, that _similar_ causes will often produce _opposite_ effects. We may be thrown into trance by fright; and intense alarm may be the cause of recovery. I may relate an oriental anecdote as an analogy, which, however, I beg you to receive with some reservation.

A Persian, at the siege of Sardis, was about to kill Crœsus, whom he did not recognise. By his side was the king’s dumb child, who, in a sudden paroxysm of agony, screamed out, “Kill not Crœsus.” From this instant (as it were a miracle), Herodotus writes, his speech was fully restored!

We learn from Bourgeois, in 1838, that a medical man, from the sudden influence of grief, sunk into a cataleptic state, but his consciousness never left him. The lamentations of his wife, the sympathetic condolence of his medical friends, and the arrangements regarding his funeral, were to him distinctly audible. He knew that he was in his coffin, and that there was a solemn procession following him to the grave. As the solemn words of “Earth to earth” were uttered, and the dust fell on his coffin lid, the consciousness of this, and his horror at his impending fate, burst the fetters of his icy trance—he shrieked aloud, and was saved.

In the “Psychological Magazine” we read of a lady who fell into a state of catalepsy, after a violent nervous disorder.

“It seemed to her, as if in a dream, that she was really dead. Yet she was perfectly conscious of all that happened around her in this dreadful state. She distinctly heard her friends speaking, and lamenting her death, at the side of her coffin; she felt them pull on her dead clothes, and lay her in it. This feeling produced a mental anxiety which was indescribable. She tried to cry, but her soul was without power, and could not act on her body. She had the contradictory feeling, as if she were in her own body, and yet not in it, at one and the same time. It was equally impossible for her to stretch out her arm, or to open her eyes, as to cry, although she continually endeavoured to do so. The internal anguish of her mind was, however, at its utmost height, when the funeral hymns were sung, and when the lid of the coffin was about to be nailed on. The thought that she was to be buried alive was the first one which gave activity to her soul, and caused it to operate on her corporeal frame.”

I have been assured that the soldier who has been placed in his grave by such an error, has been awoke in his coffin by the volley fired over him.

Parallel with these are the instances in which vitality seemed to be instantly excited by acute pain.

I remember the case of a cataleptic girl, related by the Abbé Menon, who was doomed to dissection; the first stroke of the _scalpel_ awoke her, and she lived.

Cardinal Sommaglia was not so fortunate. He fell into _syncope_ from intense grief, and it was decided that he should be opened and embalmed. As the surgeon’s knife punctured the lungs, the heart throbbed, and the cardinal attempted to avert the knife with his hand; but the _die_ was cast, and he shortly _died_.

The Abbé Prevost was also sacrificed in this way.

As Vesalius, the physician of Philip II., was opening the thorax of a Spanish gentleman, the heart palpitated. Death also occurred here. Vesalius was brought before the Inquisition, but was pardoned.

A gentleman was seized, apparently with apoplexy, while at cards. A vein was opened in both arms, but _no blood flowed_. He was placed in a room with two watchers, who slept, alas! too long; for in the morning the room was _deluged with blood_ from the punctures, and his life was gone.

These are indeed unhappy instances of the errors of omission and commission entailed on the fallibility of science. I believe a French author, Bruhier, has collected fifty-two cases of persons buried alive, four which were dissected prematurely, fifty-three which recovered, and seventy-two which were falsely reported dead.

ASTR. There is a solemn problem associated with this, on which I have often reflected, the solution of which, I presume, your philosophy _cannot_ offer to us. At what moment would the mind cease to influence the body, were there no recovery from the trance? I have sometimes felt a mysterious influence, apart, I am sure, from philosophy, that whispered me, the life, which I had watched in its ebb, was at length gone. Yet, of the transit of an immaterial spirit, although convinced of the sublime truth, it is certain we _know_ nothing.

EV. Nothing _demonstrative_. It is not, however, when the body _seems_ dead, for consciousness, or the _systemic_ life, may for awhile be suspended by mere cold. But dissolution is _that point_, unknown to us, when the principle of life (whether that be the influence of _arterial_ blood, or electricity, magnetism, or galvanism,) is not excitable—when _molecular_ death has ensued; not even irritability, that _vis insita_ or _vis nervosa_ of Haller, remaining. Of course mind must instantly depart on the commencement of _decomposition_, the brain being _then_ totally incompatible with mind. The _stoics_ believed the soul to occupy the body _until it was putrified_, and resolved into its _materia prima_.

ASTR. I once thought, Evelyn, that the difference in the tenacity of life in the man and the zoophyte might with some subtlety be explained on this principle—thus: That the life of a reasoning creature was in _its soul_; that of an inferior animal in its _spinal irritability_. Thus, when man is decapitated, his _soul_ is gone from him—he is dead; but when vitality is in the _vis nervea_, as in the insect, life may exist without a head, that is, the organ of a soul. The butterfly will flutter, I am told, long after decapitation.

EV. The _excito-motary_ principle illustrates this fact, without the requisition of such a notion; and life, we know, may be _artificially sustained_ for a time after decapitation. The interesting physiology of the _reflex actions_ of a nerve explains this, and all the terrific convulsions of galvanized bodies.

CAST. I think I have a glimpse of your meaning, Evelyn. May we not believe, then, that there is truth in the affirmation, that Charlotte Corday’s cheeks _blushed_ at her exposure after her decollation?

EV. There is far more romance than truth, fair Castaly, in this story; but I do believe the probability of a story almost as marvellous, that the lips of Mary Stuart _prayed visibly_ after her head fell from her body. Sœmmering has written, that if the open eyes of a decollated head be turned full on the sun, the lids will immediately close, but this of course _without consciousness_.

CAST. And yet some _learned_ men believed the head of Charlotte Corday sensible of its state, from this asserted fact of its blushing.

EV. They should _not_ have believed without complete evidence. Indeed, this question may now be deemed decided _in the negative_, by the experiments of a learned professor of Heidelburg, on the head of Sebastian Zink, decollated at Rastadt. On placing bitters on the tongue, and hallooing “pardon” in his ear _at the instant of decapitation_, it was proved that there was an utter insensibility to all.

IDA. Then sensation is instantly destroyed. In this, as in all his dispensations, how is the mercy of the Deity displayed!

EV. It is still a question with us, whether our physical sensations on the point of dissolution are often so acute as they appear.

Cabanis and the famous Guillotine declared their conviction that no pain was felt at the moment of or after decapitation. In the works of Lord Bacon, we read of one who was suspended till he was all but dead, and his declaration was that his suffering was a mere trifle. Cowper also left a manuscript, in which he states that in one of his three attempts at suicide, he hung himself over his door in the Temple, but that he did not suffer in the least.

IDA. And in drowning?

EV. While the medical committee of the Humane Society were framing those scientific rules which have rendered the process of resuscitation so successful, I remember especially one pale and melancholy girl, who glided in before us like a spectre. She had attempted suicide, but her intention was happily thwarted, after she had been for many minutes in the water, and was apparently lifeless.

True, the mental agony which prompts to such an act, will often overwhelm sensation; but this creature was _conscious of her act_, and assured us that the sensation of drowning was but _an intense feeling of faintness preceding a sinking into insensibility, with a short spasmodic struggle; an uneasiness rather than a pain_. When Clarence therefore, recounting his dream, exclaims,—

“My God, methought what _pain_ it was to drown!”

I believe, he should rather have referred his feelings to his _recovery_, if the words of the pale girl were true; for, when consciousness and sensation are returning, the feeling is intense. Throughout the body, as it is recovering from _apathetic_ numbness, the sense of returning circulation of the blood is terrible: an acute sensation of _pins and needles_ in the brain and the marrow of the spine. No wonder, then, that these resuscitated beings will request that _no efforts_ may be made, should they again be in the state of suspended animation. The sensation on being born is probably as acute as that on dissolution.

IDA. Then there _is_ consciousness?

EV. The evidence of Dr. Adam Clarke will illustrate this interesting question. Yet I differ somewhat with him, regarding so perfect a consciousness during submersion. In his life, you will see the following dialogue with Dr. Lettsom, in which Clarke describes his own case of immersion:

“Dr. Lettsom said,—‘Of all that I have seen restored, or questioned afterwards, I never found one who had the smallest recollection of any thing that passed, from the moment they went under water, till the time in which they were restored to life and thought.’ Dr. Clarke answered Dr. L.,—‘I knew a case to the contrary.’ ‘Did you, indeed?’ ‘Yes, Dr. L., and the case was my own. I was once drowned.’ And then related the circumstances, and added,—‘I saw my danger, but thought the mare would swim, and I knew I could ride when we were overwhelmed. It appeared to me, that I had gone to the bottom with my eyes open. At first, I thought I saw the bottom clearly, and then felt neither apprehension nor pain; on the contrary, I felt as if I had been in the most delightful situation; my mind was tranquil and uncommonly happy. I felt as if in Paradise, and yet I do not recollect that I saw any person; the impressions of happiness seemed not to be derived from any thing around me, but from the state of my mind. And yet I had a general apprehension of pleasing objects; and I cannot recollect that any thing appeared defined, nor did my eye take in any object, only I had a general impression of a green colour, as of fields or gardens. But my happiness did not arise from these, but appeared to consist merely in the tranquil, indescribably tranquil, state of my mind. By and by, I seemed to awake as out of a slumber, and felt unutterable pain and difficulty of breathing; and now I found I had been carried by a strong wave, and left in very shallow water upon the shore, and the pain I felt was occasioned by the air once more inflating my lungs and producing respiration. How long I had been under water I cannot tell; it may however be guessed at by this circumstance: when restored to the power of reflection, I looked for the mare, and saw her walking leisurely down shore towards home, then about half a mile distant from the place where we were submerged. Now, I aver,—1st. That in being drowned I felt no pain;—2nd. That I did not, for a simple moment, lose my consciousness;—3rd. I felt indescribably happy, and, though dead as to the total suspension of all the functions of life, yet I felt no pain in dying; and I take for granted, from this circumstance, those who die by drowning feel no pain, and that probably it is the easiest of all deaths;—4th. That I felt no pain till once more exposed to the action of the atmospheric air, and then I felt great pain and anguish in returning to life, which anguish, had I continued under water, I should have never felt;—5th. That animation must have been totally suspended from the time I must have been under water, which time might be in some measure ascertained by the distance the mare was from the place of my submersion, which was at least half a mile, and she was not, when I first observed her, making any speed;—6th. Whether there were any thing preternatural in my escape, I cannot tell; or whether a ground swell had not, in a merely natural way, borne me to the shore, and the retrocession of the tide (for it was then ebbing), left me exposed to the open air, I cannot tell. My preservation must have been the effect of natural causes; and yet it appears to be more rational to attribute it to a superior agency. Here then, Dr. L., is a case widely different, it appears, from those you have witnessed, and which argues very little for the modish doctrine of the materiality of the soul.’ Dr. Lettsom appeared puzzled with this relation, but did not attempt to make any remarks on it.”

And well he might; for if animation were _totally suspended_, consciousness would have been suspended also.

TRANSMIGRATION.—ANALYSIS OF TRANCE.

“Thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras, ere I will allow of
thy wits; and fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the
soul of thy grandam.”

TWELFTH NIGHT.

“Through all thy veins shall run
A cold and drowsy humour, which shall seize
Each vital spirit.”
ROMEO AND JULIET.

ASTR. You have granted me more than you desire, dear Evelyn. If life be _restored_, it had never _deserted_ the body, and yet the mind _had_ deserted it.

The mind and body, then, are both independent of each other. From this truth, a metaphysical question of deep and wondrous interest arises. _In what condition does the mind exist, during so long a period, uninfluencing and uninfluenced by the power of perception?_ I remember searching for some elucidation of this mystery among those ghost-stories of the Hebrews, founded on the “purgatorie of souls” in Stehelin’s “Traditions of the Jews,” but I rose from my reading unenlightened.

IDA. And ever will, Astrophel. Profane curiosity must fail in such a study; adoration alone can sanctify this mystic question, on which theologians and philosophers, even those devoutly confident in the sublime truths of immortality, have so essentially differed.

Like Astrophel, Paley inquires where is the soul during suspended vitality? and Priestly, where when the body was created? Hume, with the subtlety of a sceptic, asks how can the soul long be the same, seeing that, like the body, its particles are constantly changing? While Glanville thinks himself a wondrous wight, as he prates of its “_essential spissitude_, a something that is more subtle than body, contracting itself into a _less ubi_.”

Were this sublime secret fathomable by the deepest intellect, then would be unfolded things above, which are ordained to be ever mysteries to creatures on earth; such as the future existence of the spirit, and the nature of Paradise.

Although revelation has given us glimpses, enough to satisfy humble devotion, what mind can _decide_ on the exact nature and changes of its own future state? The negative answer is at once returned by the variety of these learned opinions:—That the soul is, immediately after death, submitted to its reward or punishment;—That its state after death is one of _half_ happiness or misery, until it be again joined to its body on the resurrection; and then it shall enjoy or suffer the _extremes_ of felicity or torment;—That the soul rests in quiet unconsciousness until the day of judgment;—And lastly, that souls are purified by purgatory and comparative suffering, and _then_ are admitted into the realms of perpetual enjoyment.

ASTR. Is it not strange that in this notion of purgatory, with slight variations, pagans, and Romanists, and Egyptians, and Brahmins, so nearly accord? In the creed of the Brahmins, there is something of sublimity, whatever may be their error, and Ida will not chide, if I repeat the essence of their creed, which Robertson has gathered from the “Baghvat Geeta.”

“Every intelligent nature, particularly the souls of men, they conceived to be portions separated from this great spirit; to which, after fulfilling their destiny on earth, and attaining a proper degree of purity, they would be again reunited. In order to efface the stains with which a soul, during its residence on earth, has been defiled by the indulgence of sensual and corrupt appetites, they taught that it must pass, in a long succession of transmigrations, through the bodies of different animals, until, by what it suffers and what it leaves in the various forms of its existence, it shall be so thoroughly refined from all pollution, as to be rendered meet for being absorbed into the divine essence, and returns, like a drop, into that unbounded ocean from which it originally issued.”

Aristotle, in taking up this notion of transmigration in his book “De Animâ,” says that “the soul was always joined to a body, sometimes to one, sometimes to another.” And from this idea were taken the stories of Fadlallah and the Dervis, in the “Spectator,” of the “Transmigrations of Indus,” and the beautiful fable of “Psyche,” or the soul, which when a body died, could not live _alone_ on earth, and so crept into another. Herodotus, in the second book of his history, has some allusions to the Egyptian creed; and, indeed, the fear of this transmigration was the origin of mummies among the Copts. Their belief that the soul (the immortality of which they very early, if not the first, decided,) could not leave the body when _entire_, induced them to preserve that body as long as possible; and the mummy unrollers and hieroglyphic readers must commit sad sacrilege, by exposing their sacred dust to the decomposition of air.

When the body was dissolved, however, the soul entered that of some animal that instant born; and profane commentators have, on this creed, presumed to explain the sacred story of the “banishment and savage life of Nebuchadnezzar.” At the end of 30,000 years, it again entered that of a man; and it is likely that their object in embalming was, to have the soul _re-enter the same body_ from choice and habit.

Simonides, four hundred years after the siege of Troy, ungallantly reversed this doctrine, deciding that “the souls of women were formed of the principles and elements of brutes.” The Pythagorean system was, if not more courteous, at least more just.

“Thus all things are but altered, nothing dies;
And here and there th’ embodied spirit flies.
By time, or force, or sickness, dispossess’d,
And lodges, where it lights, in bird or beast;
Or hunts without, till ready limbs it find,
And actuates those according to their kind.
From tenement to tenement is toss’d,
The soul is still the same, the figure only lost.”

This is from Dryden’s translation of Chaucer.

And Burton’s record is as follows:

“The Pythagoreans defend _Metempsychosis_ and _Palingenesia_, that souls go from one body to another, _epotâ prius Lethes nudâ_, as men into wolves, beares, dogs, hogs, as they were inclined in their lives, or participated in conditions:

‘_——inque ferinas_
_Possumus ire domus pecudumque in corpora condi._’

“Lucian’s cock was first _Euphorbus_, a captaine:

‘_Ille ego (nam memini) Trojani tempore belli_
_Panthoides Euphorbus eram._’”

And Plato, in Timæus, and in Phædo—

EV. Enough of Plato, dear Astrophel; or believe, with me, that _his_ philosophy on this point was merely _figurative of the similarity of mind, or genius, or feature, between the dead and the living_;—as it was said of old, that the soul of Raphael had transmigrated to the body of Francesco Mazzola (Parmegiano), _because_ his style and personal beauty so closely resembled those of the all but divine master of his art.

And pray what was the gist of that special astronomer, who affirmed that he “saw something written in the moon?”—A wild romance only? No, forsooth. Pythagoras may classically vociferate—

“——errat, et illinc,
Huc venit, hinc illuc, et quoslibet occupat artus
Spiritus: eque feris humana in corpora transit,
Inque feras noster.”

But read further, and you will find the high moral to be a severe injunction against flesh-eating:

“Then let not piety be put to flight,
To please the taste of glutton appetite;
But suffer innate souls secure to dwell,
Lest from their seats your parents you expel:
With rabid hunger feed upon your kind,
Or from a beast dislodge a brother’s mind.”

Think you this injunction will be obeyed, in the face of the “Almanac des Gourmands?”

IDA. Evelyn is severe. May I tell him that, among the records of the East, he will find incidents blended with this idea which may almost consecrate the creed of a Pagan. As the honey is hung close to the poisoned sting of the bee, there may be a bright spot to illuminate the gloomy annals of superstition. The very belief in _transmigration_ may impart an atom of mercy, even to an infidel; and where superstition, shorn of the light of Christianity, _must_ prevail, it were better sure to foster that notion which may, even in one little sentiment, half humanize the heart.