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_WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO TRANCE, CATALEPSY, AND OTHER FORMS OF SUSPENDED ANIMATION_
_Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of Medical Sciences, Palermo; Author of “The Recrudescence of Leprosy and its Causation”_
_Late Medical Inspector, U.S. Army; Corresponding Member of the New York Academy of Sciences_
LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIM. 1896
“What if in the tomb I awake!”--_Romeo and Juliet._
“How comes it about that patients, given over as dead by their physicians, sometimes recover, and that some have even returned to life in the very time of their funerals?”--CELSUS.
“Such is the condition of humanity, and so uncertain is men’s judgment, that they cannot determine even death itself.”--PLINY.
A DISTRESSING experience in the writer’s family many years ago brought home to his mind the danger of premature burial, and led ultimately to the careful study of a gruesome subject to which he has a strong natural repugnance. His collaborator in the volume has himself passed through a state of profound suspended animation from drowning, having been laid out for dead--an experience which has induced him in like manner to investigate the various death-counterfeits. The results of the independent inquiries carried on by both of us in various parts of Europe and America, and by one of us during a sojourn in India in the early part of this year, are now laid before the reader, with such practical suggestions as it is hoped may prepare the way for bringing about certain needed reforms in our burial customs.
The danger, as I have attempted to show, is very real--to ourselves, to those most dear to us, and to the community in general; and it should be a subject of very anxious concern how this danger may be minimised or altogether prevented. The duty of taking the most effective precautions to this end is one that naturally falls to the Legislature, especially under a Government professing to regard social questions as of paramount importance. Fortunately, this is a non-party and a non-contentious question, it imperils no interest, so that no formal obstruction or unnecessary delay need be apprehended; and it should be urged upon the Government to introduce and carry an effective measure at the earliest opportunity, not only as a security against the possibility of so terrible an evil, but to quiet the widespread and not altogether unreasonable apprehension on this subject which is now so prevalent.