Part 28

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.