Kitabı oku: «The Phantom World; or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c.», sayfa 32

CHAPTER XL.
DIVERS SYSTEMS FOR EXPLAINING THE RETURN OF SPIRITS

The affair of ghosts having made so much noise in the world as it has done, it is not surprising that a diversity of systems should have been formed upon it, and that so many manners should have been proposed to explain their return to earth and their operations.

Some have thought that it was a momentary resurrection caused by the soul of the defunct, which re-entered his body, or by the demon, who reanimated him, and caused him to act for a while, whilst his blood retained its consistency and fluidity, and his organic functions were not entirely corrupted and deranged.

Others, struck with the consequence of such principles, and the arguments which might be deduced from them, have liked better to suppose that these vampires were not really dead; that they still retained certain seeds of life, and that their spirits could from time to time reanimate and bring them out of their tombs, to make their appearance amongst men, take refreshment, and renew the nourishing juices and animal spirits by sucking the blood of their near kindred.

There has lately been printed a dissertation on the uncertainty of the signs of death, and the abuse of hasty interments, by M. Jacques Benigne Vinslow, Doctor, Regent of the Faculty at Paris, translated, with a commentary, by Jacques Jean Bruhier, physician, at Paris, 1742, in 8vo. This work may serve to explain how persons who have been believed to be dead, and have been buried as such, have nevertheless been found alive a pretty long time after their funeral obsequies had been performed. That will perhaps render vampirism less incredible.

M. Vinslow, Doctor, and Regent of the Medical Faculty at Paris, maintained, in the month of April, 1740, a thesis, in which he asks if the experiments of surgery are fitter than all others to discover some less uncertain signs of doubtful death. He therein maintained that there are several occurrences in which the signs of death are very doubtful; and he adduces several instances of persons believed to be dead, and interred as such, who nevertheless were afterwards found to be alive.

M. Bruhier, M.D., has translated this thesis into French, and has made some learned additions to it, which serve to strengthen the opinion of M. Vinslow. The work is very interesting, from the matter it treats upon, and very agreeable to read, from the manner in which it is written. I am about to make some extracts from it, which may be useful to my subject. I shall adhere principally to the most certain and singular facts; for to relate them all, we must transcribe the whole work.

It is known that John Duns, surnamed Scot,⁵⁵⁸ or the Subtile Doctor, had the misfortune to be interred alive at Cologne, and that when his tomb was opened some time afterwards, it was found that he had gnawn his arm.⁵⁵⁹ The same thing is related of the Emperor Zeno, who made himself heard from the depth of his tomb by repeated cries to those who were watching over him. Lancisi, a celebrated physician of the Pope Clement XI., relates that at Rome he was witness to a person of distinction being still alive when he wrote, who resumed sense and motion whilst they were chanting his funeral service at church.

Pierre Zacchias, another celebrated physician of Rome, says, that in the hospital of the Saint Esprit, a young man, who was attacked with the plague, fell into so complete a state of syncope, that he was believed to be really dead. Whilst they were carrying his corpse, along with a great many others, on the other side of the Tiber, the young man gave signs of life. He was brought back to the hospital and cured. Two days after, he fell into a similar syncope, and that time he was reputed to be dead beyond recovery. He was placed amongst others intended for burial, came to himself a second time, and was yet living when Zacchias wrote.

It is related, that a man named William Foxley, when forty years of age,⁵⁶⁰ falling asleep on the 27th of April, 1546, remained plunged in sleep for fourteen days and fourteen nights, without any preceding malady. He could not persuade himself that he had slept more than one night, and was convinced of his long sleep only by being shown a building begun some days before this drowsy attack, and which he beheld completed on his awaking. It is said that in the time of Pope Gregory II. a scholar of Lubec slept for seven years consecutively. Lilius Giraldus⁵⁶¹ relates that a peasant slept through the whole autumn and winter.

CHAPTER XLI.
VARIOUS INSTANCES OF PERSONS BEING BURIED ALIVE

Plutarch relates that a man who fell from a great height, having pitched upon his neck, was believed to be dead, without there being the appearance of any hurt. As they were carrying him to be buried, the day after, he all at once recovered his strength and his senses. Asclepiades⁵⁶² meeting a great funeral train of a person they were taking to be interred, obtained permission to look at and to touch the dead man; he found some signs of life in him, and by means of proper remedies, he immediately recalled him to life, and restored him in sound health to his parents and relations.

There are several instances of persons who after being interred came to themselves, and lived a long time in perfect health. They relate in particular,⁵⁶³ that a woman of Orleans was buried in a cemetery, with a ring on her finger, which they had not been able to draw off her finger when she was placed in her coffin. The following night, a domestic, attracted by the hope of gain, broke open the coffin, and as he could not tear the ring off her finger, was about to cut her finger off, when she uttered a loud shriek. The servant fled. The woman disengaged herself as she could from her winding sheet, returned home, and survived her husband.

M. Bernard, a principal surgeon at Paris, attests that, being with his father at the parish of Réal, they took from the tombs, living and breathing, a monk of the order of St. Francis, who had been shut up in it three or four days, and who had gnawed his hands around the bands which confined them. But he died almost the moment that he was in the air.

Several persons have made mention of that wife of a counselor of Cologne,⁵⁶⁴ who having been interred with a valuable ring on her finger, in 1571, the grave-digger opened the grave the succeeding night to steal the ring. But the good lady caught hold of him, and forced him to take her out of the coffin. He, however, disengaged himself from her hands, and fled. The resuscitated lady went and rapped at the door of her house. At first they thought it was a phantom, and left her a long time at the door, waiting anxiously to be let in; but at last they opened it for her. They warmed her, and she recovered her health perfectly, and had after that three sons, who all belonged to the church. This event is represented on her sepulchre in a picture, or painting, in which the story is represented, and moreover, written, in German verses.

It is added that the lady, in order to convince those of the house that it was herself, told the footman who came to the door that the horses had gone up to the hay-loft, which was true; and there are still to be seen at the windows of the grenier of that house, horses' heads, carved in wood, as a sign of the truth of the matter.

François de Civile, a Norman gentleman,⁵⁶⁵ was the captain of a hundred men in the city of Rouen, when it was besieged by Charles IX., and he was then six-and-twenty. He was wounded to death at the end of an assault; and having fallen into the moat, some pioneers placed him in a grave with some other bodies, and covered them over with a little earth. He remained there from eleven in the morning till half-past six in the evening, when his servant went to disinter him. This domestic, having remarked some signs of life, put him in a bed, where he remained for five days and nights, without speaking, or giving any other sign of feeling, but as burning hot with fever as he had been cold in the grave. The city having been taken by storm, the servants of an officer of the victorious army, who was to lodge in the house wherein was Civile, threw the latter upon a paillasse in a back room, whence his brother's enemies tossed him out of the window upon a dunghill, where he remained for more than seventy-two hours in his shirt. At the end of that time, one of his relations, surprised to find him still alive, sent him to a league's distance from Rouen,⁵⁶⁶ where he was attended to, and at last was perfectly cured.

During a great plague, which attacked the city of Dijon in 1558, a lady, named Nicole Lentillet, being reputed dead of the epidemic, was thrown into a great pit, wherein they buried the dead. The day after her interment, in the morning, she came to herself again, and made vain efforts to get out, but her weakness, and the weight of the other bodies with which she was covered, prevented her doing so. She remained in this horrible situation for four days, when the burial men drew her out, and carried her back to her house, where she perfectly recovered her health.

A young lady of Augsburg,⁵⁶⁷ having fallen into a swoon, or trance, her body was placed under a deep vault, without being covered with earth; but the entrance to this subterranean vault was closely walled up. Some years after that time, some one of the same family died. The vault was opened, and the body of the young lady was found at the very entrance, without any fingers to her right hand, which she had devoured in despair.

On the 25th of July, 1688, there died at Metz a hair-dresser's boy, of an apoplectic fit, in the evening, after supper.

On the 28th of the same month, he was heard to moan again several times. They took him out of his grave, and he was attended by doctors and surgeons. The physician maintained, after he had been opened, that the young man had not been dead two hours. This is extracted from the manuscript of a bourgeois of Metz, who was cotemporary with him.

CHAPTER XLII.
INSTANCES OF DROWNED PERSONS RECOVERING THEIR HEALTH

Here follow some instances of drowned persons⁵⁶⁸ 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 assist 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 passes 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 anus 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.

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

Very clever physicians assert⁵⁷⁰ 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 Suasso, 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 Héréz, 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 circumstances. 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.

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 principal 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 reassure 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?