Curiosities of Medical Experience Part 6

With what different feelings does the traveller wander over the cemetery of _Pere la Chaise_? I am well aware that many of the gewgaw attributes that there decorate the grave, have been called the "_frippery_," "_the foppery_" of grief; but does there exist a generous, a n.o.ble sentiment, that may not be perverted by interested motives and hypocrisy into contemptible professions? How often is the sublime rendered ridiculous by bad taste and hyperbolic affectation! When we behold the fond lover pressing to his lips a lock of hair, or the portrait of all that he holds dear, the cold calculating egotist may call this the _frippery of love_; but the stoic who thinks thus, has never known the "sweet pangs" of requited affection, when, in bitter absence, the recollection of bliss gone by, imbodies in our imagination the form we once pressed to our respondent heart. The creation of our busy fancy stands before us, gazing on us with that tender look that in happier days greeted the hour of meeting; or trembles in our tears as when we last parted--to meet, perhaps, no more! With what fervour of religious love do we not behold the simple girl kneeling with uplift eye and hand on the green sod that covers all that endeared her to existence, till, overwhelmed with burning, choking regrets--as idle as they are uncontrollable--she sinks prostrate on the cold earth that now shrouds that bosom which once nestled her young hopes and fears! There have I seen the pale, the haggard youth,--to all appearances a student,--seated mournfully by the side of a tomb, absorbed in deep thought, heedless of the idlers who pa.s.sed by him, looking at him perhaps with contempt!--heedless of the swift flight of time, which shrouded him imperceptibly in darkness, until he was warned by the guardian of the dead that it was time to depart--and to depart _alone_! No inscription recorded the "one loved name;" he would not expose it to the unfeeling gaze of the heartless tourist: all he would willingly have traced upon her tomb, would have been "Here lies _my own_!"

The mouldering earth, the fleshless skeleton over which he mourns, cannot obliterate the remembrance of what she was: though her eyes, perhaps, no longer exist, still their former languid, liquid look of bliss, beams freshly in his recollection. The lips which once p.r.o.nounced the long wished-for avowal of mutual love are still moist and open to memory's embrace--still seem to lisp the delicious _tu_! Our language is rich, without comparison richer far than the French; but we have nothing so endearing, so bewitching, as their _tu-toiement_: our _thee's_ and _thou's_ are frigid, chilly, when compared to the _first toi_ that escapes inadvertently from beloved lips! A French writer has beautifully expressed this exquisite moment: "Le _premier tu_ est tout-puissant; c'est le _fiat lux_ de l'ame; il est sublime, il debrouille le chaos!"

Sublime are the words, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord!" Would it be irreligious to say, "Happy are the dead who die beloved?" Their fond and ardent heart had never been chilled by the withering hand of infidelity and ingrat.i.tude. They died in an ecstatic dream of perfect bliss on earth, and never were awakened to the world's mocking realities!--they died when they felt and believed in their heart of hearts that they were dearly beloved--could not be loved more dearly: with that conviction, death, in a worldly acceptation, can never be untimely.

Probably, they died still sufficiently animated by a latent, lingering spark of life, to press the hand that was so often linked in mutual pressure in happy days--to feel the burning tear of anguish drop on the pale cheek--to hear the sad, the awful, last word, _a Dieu!_--an expression that habit has rendered trivial, but which bears with it, in the tenderest solicitude, the most hallowed meaning; since, in p.r.o.nouncing it, we leave all that we cherish under the protection and the safeguard of OUR G.o.d.

Affection deprives death of all horrors. We shrink not from the remains of what we cherished. Despite its impiety, there was something refined in that conviction of the ancients, who imagined that in bestowing their farewell kiss they inhaled the souls of those they loved. How sweet are those lines of Macrobius, originally attributed to Plato!

Dum semihulco suavio Meum pullum suavior, Dulcemque florem spiritus Duco ex aperto tramite, Animo tunc aegra et saucia Cucurrit ad l.a.b.i.a mihi!

Our Shakspeare has quaintly, yet beautifully, described this parting embrace:

And lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death.

Nor was it only on the dying that the ancients bestowed this mark of fondness: Tibullus and Propertius tell us, that, as their bodies were laid on the funeral pile, they clasped them in a fond and last embrace.

In regard to the painted crosses, the chaplets, the garlands of flowers, which mark the hallowed resting-place of the departed, it may be said that they are but romantic and poetical expressions of grief. If it were only real grief that expressed itself by outward testimonials, how soon would mourning be banished as an idle expense!--the "inky cloak," and customary "suits of solemn black--the trappings and the suit of woes," be laid aside! What a different feeling does the splendid catafalc.u.m, covered with black velvet, studded with silver tears, and illumined by thousands of glaring tapers, excite, when compared with the simple and verdant graves which point out the spot "where souls do couch in flowers," blessed by affection's tears instead of l.u.s.tral waters. At all periods, amongst every nation, flowers and certain trees seem to have been consecrated to the dead. The Romans planted the wild vine and the box around their tombs.

Thus Martial to Alcimenes:

Accipe, non Phario nutantia pondera saxo, Quae cineri va.n.u.s dat ruitura labor, Sed fragiles buxos, et opacas palmitis umbras, Quaeque virent lacrymis humida prata meis.

The wealthy a.s.signed a beauteous garden to their departed favourites, as in the instance of Augustus and Maecenas. Not only did they suspend garlands over their tombs, but scattered flowers around them. Again in Virgil,

Purpureosque jacit flores, ac talia fatur.

The same custom prevailed amongst the Grecians, who considered all purple and white flowers acceptable to the dead. The Thessalian's strewed Achilles' grave with the immortal amaranth and lilies. Electra complains that the tomb of Agamemnon received no myrtle boughs; in short, instances of this practice are every where to be found. In addition to flowers and perfumes, ribands and hair were also deposited on their sepulchres.

Electra adorns Agamemnon's tomb with her locks, and Canace laments that she had not been able to perform the same rite on her beloved Macareus.

Poets tell us that precious ointments and wines were poured upon their monuments; and we find, in Euripides, Helen bidding Hermione to take locks of her hair, honey mixed with milk, and wine, to the sepulchre of her aunt.

Amongst the Chinese, to the present day, the cypress and the fir, shade their cemeteries: the former tree, an attribute of Pluto was ever considered funereal, hence called _feralis_; and the _feralia_ were festivals in honour of the dead, observed by the Romans. Varro pretends that the cypress was called funereal from _funus_, as it emitted an antiseptic aroma. Pliny and others pretend that it typified the dead, from its never shooting out fresh sprouts when the trunk was hewn down. At any rate, to this hour, it is planted in burying-grounds in every civilized country.

The yew-tree has also been considered an emblem of mourning from the earliest times. The custom of planting it singly appears also to be very ancient. Statius, in his Thebaid, calls it the _solitary yew_. In England, the trees planted in churchyards were protected by legal enactments, as appears by a statute of 35 Edward I. From the scarcity of bow staves, they had been frequently despoiled by our numerous archers; and, to meet this service, by an enactment of Edward IV. every foreign trader was obliged to bring in four bow staves for every ton of imported merchandise; Elizabeth, from the scarcity of this important article, put the statute in full force.

Let us then hope, both for the living and the dead, that this custom, which obtains in France and other countries, will be adopted by us, instead of becoming the subject of ridicule. It is far more desirable to see families repairing to the tomb of the departed on the anniversary of their death, than to behold them daily pa.s.sing by their remains with cold indifference.

It would scarcely be believed upon the continent of Europe, that to this very hour bodies are buried in confined churchyards in the most crowded and dirty parts of the British metropolis, such as Russel-court, Drury-lane, and various other similar holes and corners; the rudest nations were never guilty of such a glaring impropriety. In the kingdom of Siam, the remains of the opulent are burnt with great ceremony, while the bodies of the poor are carried out and exposed on mountains: in Ceylon, the remains of the indigent are interred in the neighbouring woods; the rich consumed on gorgeous funeral piles.

The Chinese inhume their dead at some distance from their cities and towns; it is only the bodies of the rich and n.o.ble that are allowed to remain on the premises of the family. Navarette mentions a curious custom prevalent in one of their provinces, Chan Si, where, in the event of two betrothed persons dying at the same period, they are married while their coffins are still in their former dwelling, and afterwards burnt together.

By the accounts of various travellers, the wealthy Chinese are burnt with great pomp, and their monuments are most curious and expensive. Their mausoleums are actually halls or grottos, decorated with splendour: and they inter with the deceased many articles to which he might have been attached during life, and that may add to his comforts after death. A custom that was more prevalent before the invasion of the Tartars--a comb, a pair of scissars to pare his nails; four little purses, containing the nail-parings of the defunct, were placed in the coffin, and, amongst the wealthy, gold coin and jewels were inserted in the mouth. The Hottentots bury their dead in the wild clefts of rocks and caverns; the Peruvians bear theirs to the neighbouring hills and mountains. The Greenlanders wrap their dead in furs and skins, and carry them to a considerable distance from their huts. In Kamtschatka and Siberia bodies are covered with snow in caverns and caves; and the African savages perform the same funeral rites as the Irish: their dead are carried to the burying-ground, followed by crowds of relatives and other people, who join the procession, bellowing and howling most piteously, "Oh! why did you die? did you want any thing that was ever denied you?" and after the funeral the survivors invariably get drunk on palm-wine, or any strong liquor they can procure; a custom similar to the _circ.u.mpotatio_ of the Romans.

BURIED ALIVE.

Every nation, however uncivilized, holds the idea of being buried alive in constant dread; the horrors of such a situation cannot be described.

Bodies have been found where the miserable victims of precipitation had actually devoured the flesh of their arms in the agonies of hunger and despair. Such was the fate of John Scott and the Emperor Zeno. It is to be feared that this melancholy occurrence is more frequent than is supposed, more especially in countries where inhumation is speedily resorted to. The ancients were remarkably cautious in this respect, especially when we take into consideration the climate of Greece and Rome during the summer months. A law of Greece on this subject directs that "the corpse should be laid out at the relations' pleasure, but that the following morning before daylight the funeral procession should take place." From various authorities, however, it appears that the bodies were kept three, and sometimes six days. Servius was of opinion that the time for burning bodies was the eighth day, and the time for burying the tenth; it appears, however, that this was a privilege granted to the wealthy, as the poor were consumed the day after their death, a custom alluded to in an epigram of Callimachus. Among the Romans several days were also allowed to elapse before interment--sometimes seven days; during which, loud cries, in which the deceased was called by his name, and the noise of various instruments resounded near the body; this was called the _conclamatio_, alluded to by Terence:

Desine, jam conclamatum est.

Lucan also alludes to this custom:

----------Sic funere primo Attonitae tacuere domus, quam corpora nondum Conclamata jacent, noc mater crine soluto Exigit ad saevos famularum brachia planctus.

The ancients held hasty inhumation in great dread, and grounded their apprehension on various current traditions. Thus Plato remarks the case of a warrior who was left for ten days on the field of battle amongst the dead, and who came to life when he was being borne to the sepulchre.

Asclepiades restored life to a man who was also consigned to the funeral pile, and Pliny relates the case of Lucius Aviola and Lucius Lamia, who showed signs of life upon the pile, but were too much injured to be saved.

Amongst the many absurd fancies regarding the dead, was the superst.i.tious belief of their being able to masticate in their coffin any substance buried with them. Women more especially were believed to be gifted with this _post mortem_ faculty of moving their jaw-bones very loudly. _Claro sonitu_, says the learned Michael Ranfft, in his curious and elaborate work, _de masticatione mortuorum_. In this apprehension, that the deceased in their hunger might devour their own limbs, articles of food were interred with them.

According to the law of the Jews, who appear to have been in constant dread of pestilential disease, the inhumation of the dead were most hasty.

Yet in this instance many Rabbi maintain that the Talmud has been erroneously interpreted, for although it decreed that a night should not be allowed to pa.s.s before inhumation, it clearly meant that actual death must have been ascertained.

While such fears are entertained of suspended animation being taken for dissolution, it is strange that in some savage tribes the aged are allowed to perish without any care being taken to prolong their lives. Such is the custom of some of the Esquimaux, where old and decrepit creatures are abandoned in their huts and left to their fate. An ancient tradition stated that the inhabitants of the Isle of Syria never died of any distemper, but dropped into their graves at a certain old age.

It would be desirable that in cases where interment is speedily resorted to, a physician should attend, in order to ascertain that death had actually taken place. This is seldom practised, from the common saying "that it is uncivil on the part of a doctor to visit a dead patient."

Various means are employed to ascertain death: the looking-gla.s.s applied to the mouth of the corpse, to find out whether breath had departed; the coldness of the extremities, the falling of the lower jaw, the rigidity of the limbs, and various other appearances, are universally known; but in the villages of Italy and Portugal, pins and needles are frequently driven under the nails, in what is vulgarly called _the quick_, to excite an excruciating pain if life should not have fled. The most certain evidence, when bodies are long kept, is most decidedly the commencement of decomposition; but, in other cases, the action of the voltaic pile on a bared muscle is an infallible test.

It is much to be feared that on the field of battle and naval actions many individuals apparently dead are buried or thrown overboard. The history of Francois de Civille, a French captain, who was missing at the siege of Rouen, is rather curious: at the storming of the town he was supposed to have been killed, and was thrown, with other bodies, in the ditch, where he remained from eleven in the morning to half-past six in the evening; when his servant, observing some latent heat, carried the body into the house. For five days and five nights his master did not exhibit the slightest sign of life, although the body gradually recovered its warmth.

At the expiration of this time, the town was carried by a.s.sault, and the servants of an officer belonging to the besiegers, having found the supposed corpse of Civille, threw it out of window, with no other covering than his s.h.i.+rt. Fortunately for the captain, he had fallen upon a dunghill, where he remained senseless for three days longer, when his body was taken up by his relations for sepulture, and ultimately brought to life. What was still more strange, Civille, like Macduff, had been "from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd," having been brought into the world by a Caesarean operation, which his mother did not survive; and after his last wonderful escape he used to sign his name with the addition of "three times born, three times buried, and three times risen from the dead by the grace of G.o.d."

The fate of the unfortunate Abbe Prevost, author of "Manon Lescaut," and other esteemed novels, was lamentable beyond expression. In pa.s.sing through the forest of Chantilly, he was seized with an apoplectic fit: the body, cold and motionless, was found the following morning, and carried by some woodcutters to the village surgeon, who proceeded to open it; it was during this terrific operation that the wretched man was roused to a sense of his miserable condition by the agonies he endured, to expire soon after in all the complicated horrors of his situation. Various cases are recorded where persons remained in a state of apparent death for a considerable time. Cullen mentions an hysterical woman who was deprived of movement and sensibility for six days. Licelus knew a nun of Bresia, who, after an hysteric attack, continued in an inanimate state for ten days and nights.

SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION.

The singular fact of persons, more especially individuals who were in the habit of indulging in the use of spirituous liquors, having taken fire and been consumed, is authenticated beyond the slightest doubt. Little confidence, it is true, can be placed in the reports on this subject which occasionally appear in the newspapers of different countries; but many celebrated pract.i.tioners have witnessed and recorded the event, and physiologists have endeavoured to account for its causes. The celebrated Le Cat mentions a woman of Rheims, of the name of Millet, who was found consumed at the distance of two feet from her chimney; the room exhibited no appearance of fire, but of the unfortunate sufferer nothing was found except her skull, the bones of the lower extremities, and some vertebrae. A servant-girl was accused of the murder, and condemned to death; but on her appeal, and a subsequent investigation, her innocence was fully ascertained.

Joseph Battaglia, a surgeon of Ponte Bosio, relates the following case:--Don G. Maria Bertholi, a priest of Mount Valerius, went to the fair of Filetto, and afterwards visited a relation in Fenilo, where he intended to pa.s.s the night. Before retiring to rest, he was left reading his breviary; when, shortly afterwards, the family were alarmed by his loud cries and a strange noise in his chamber. On opening the door, he was lying prostrate on the floor, and surrounded by flickering flames.

Battaglia was immediately sent for, and on his arrival the unfortunate man was found in a most deplorable state. The integuments of the arms and the back were either consumed or detached in hanging flaps. The sufferer was sufficiently sensible to give an account of himself. He said that he felt all of a sudden as if his arm had received a violent blow from a club, and at the same time he saw scintillations of fire rising from his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, which were consumed without having burned the wrists; a handkerchief, which he had tied round his shoulders, between the s.h.i.+rt and the skin, was intact. His drawers were also sound; but, strange to say, his silk skull-cap was burnt, while his hair bore no marks of combustion.

The unfortunate man only survived the event four days, when mortification of the burnt parts was most extensive, and the body emitted intolerable putrid effluvia. The circ.u.mstances which attended this case would seem to warrant the conclusion that the electric fluid was the chief agent in the combustion.

Bianchini relates the death of the Countess of Cornelia Bandi, of Cesena, who was in the habit of using frictions of camphorated spirits. She was found consumed close to her bedside. No traces of fire could be observed in the room--the very lights had been burnt down to their sockets; but the furniture, closets, and linen were covered with a grayish soot, damp and clammy.

The Annual Register mentions two facts of a similar nature which occurred in England, one at Southampton, the other at Coventry. In the transactions of the Royal Society of London, an extraordinary instance of combustion is also recorded. The fact is thus related. Grace Pitt, the wife of a fishmonger of Ipswich, aged about sixty, had contracted a habit, which she continued for several years, of coming down every night from her bedroom, half dressed, to smoke a pipe. On the night of the 9th of April, 1744, she got up from her bed as usual; her daughter who slept with her, did not perceive she was absent till next morning when she awoke; soon after which she put on her clothes, and going down into the kitchen, found her mother stretched out on her right side, with her head near the grate; the body extended on the hearth, with the legs on the floor, which were of deal, having the appearance of a log of wood consumed by a fire without any apparent flames. On beholding this spectacle, the girl run in great haste and poured over her mother's body some water contained in two large vessels, in order to extinguish the fire, while the fetid odour and smoke that exhaled from the body almost suffocated some of the neighbours who had hastened to the girl's a.s.sistance.

The trunk was in some measure incinerated, and resembled a heap of wood covered with white ashes. The head, the arms, the legs, and the thighs, had also partic.i.p.ated in the burning. This woman, it is said, had drank a large quant.i.ty of spirituous liquor, in consequence of being overjoyed at hearing of the return of one of her daughters from Gibraltar. There was no fire in the grate, and the candle had burnt down to the socket of the candlestick, which was close to her. Besides, there were found close to the consumed body, the clothes of a child and a paper screen, which had sustained no injury from the fire. The dress of the woman consisted of a cotton gown.

It is possible that this accident may be attributed to the escape of hydrogen gas; the presence of this inflammable body in animals is evident, and it is also proved that it is liable to ignite. Morton saw flames coming from the body of a pig. Bonami and Ruysh, with a lighted candle, set fire to the vapour arising from the stomach of a woman whom they were opening. In the Memoirs of the Academy of Science of Paris, of 1751, we find the case of a butcher, who, on opening the body of an ox that had died after a malady which had swollen him considerably, was severely burnt by an explosion and a flame which rose to the height of about five feet.

Sturm, Bartholini, and Gaubius record fiery eructations in which, no doubt, phosphurated hydrogen had been generated in the stomach, from some combination of alcohol and animal substances, and inflamed upon coming into contact with atmospheric air; the fetid odour which invariably accompanies these combustions appears to warrant the conclusion. Fodere remarks that hydrogen gas is developed in certain cases of disease even in the living body, and he agrees with Mere in attributing spontaneous combustion to the united action of hydrogen and electricity. The case of a Bohemian peasant is narrated, who lost his life in consequence of ignited inflammable air issuing from his mouth which could not be extinguished. It seems evident that this accident only occurs under certain conditions of the body; generally in aged persons upwards of sixty years old; more frequently in women than in men, and chiefly when of indolent habits, a debilitated frame, and intemperate in their mode of living. That the body has been usually consumed long before the head and the extremities is evident, since these parts have been more commonly found than the trunk.

It also has been ascertained by observation that this strange accident seldom occurs in summer, but princ.i.p.ally during severe cold and frosty weather. It appears that some experiments have been recently made in the United States, when the blood flowing from the arm of a man addicted to spirituous liquors actually took fire, being placed in contact with a lighted taper!

Medical observers differ in opinion on this singular yet well-authenticated phenomenon. Lair, Vicy d'Argou, and Dupuytren maintain that to produce it, the contact of fire is necessary. Le Cat and Kopp, on the contrary, affirm that this combustion may be spontaneous without the intervention of any external agent, and resulting from some peculiar predisposition. According to Le Cat animals contain inflammable substances which ignite of themselves. De Castro relates the cases of several individuals from whom friction could draw sparks. Daniel Horstius mentions a gouty patient, from whose limbs, on being rubbed, vivid sparks arose.

These physicians consider that these electric sparks are sufficient to ignite the spirituous liquor which may have saturated any organic tissue of the body, the combustion being afterwards fed by animal oil.