The _Gaulois_ (Paris) of May 16, 1894, contains the following:--
“The funeral of the Comtesse de Jarnac, whose death was reported to have taken place on Saturday, was fixed for to-morrow, but it will probably be postponed. None of the usual signs of dissolution have appeared; the face still retains its colour, and _rigor mortis_ has not yet set in. Some hope is even entertained that the Comtesse may be simply in a state of catalepsy, and that the embolus, to which death was attributed, may have lodged in the lungs, not in the heart, in which case it may merely have caused a stoppage of the circulation (_sic_). The body had not been placed in the coffin up to a late hour last night.”
One of the authors was present on May 14, 1894, with a company of ladies and gentlemen gathered at a country mansion in the Austrian Tyrol for afternoon tea, when the conversation turned upon the subject of premature burial. Among other cases related, the host described that of one of his servants, a woman, who went to bed with toothache, a long scarf being wrapped around her face and neck. As she did not appear the following morning, our host entered her room, and found her, as he supposed, strangled to death by the scarf tightly wound about her neck. A doctor was summoned, when he found that the woman was warm and limp, her face soft and coloured as in life; yet, as there was no respiration or perceptible wrist-pulse, nor beating of the heart, he regarded her as dead, and thought it would be proper to bury her. The host had doubts, however, about the case, and, having decided to observe it further, he had the woman removed to an outhouse, where she remained three days longer without any change in her appearance or condition in any way. But, as there was considerable impatience felt at the delay of the burial by the people on the estate, the host sent for two doctors to make a final examination of the woman, and decide as to the existence of life or death. The doctors found that no change had taken place--there was softness of the skin, colour in the face, limpness of the muscles, and an unmistakable warmth of the body; but, as there was an absence of apparent respiration and beating of the heart, they decided that the woman was dead, and urged her burial, which was done. They attributed the high temperature to the process of decomposition which they assumed was going on, though there was no odour of putrefaction noticed by anyone.