Part 49 (1/2)

[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.