FROM BURIAL ALIVE.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 11 December 1914, Page 3

FROM BURIAL ALIVE.

SNATCHED FROM THE GRAVE

SOME STARTLING ESCAPES

The possibility of premature burial is often denied, because in no postmortem examination during the last fifty years has life been present. But objectors forget that in every case it was the established fact of death that demanded the postmortem examination. That otherwise under abnormal conditions the risk does sometimes exist is shown

by some amazing cases where people have escaped untimely burial apparently by the merest accident.

The recent case (says the "Glasgow Mail") of the woman Fitzpatrick, the Irish cattle dealer, who, after being several hours in the parish mortuary, returned to life, is paralleled by the remarkable case of an Accrington woman. Certified to have died of heart disease and exhaustion, she lay in her wind-ing-sheet one January morning until resuscitated by the undertaker when he called later to measure the

body. Strange to say, this was their third escape from the grave in the course of eight-and-twenty years. First, as a ismall child, then as a girl of fifteen, had death been medically certified, and on the latter occasion she havi remained three days in a seemingly lifeless condition. Vet on the third occasion no suspicion seemed to have troubled the "dying" woman that her state might be analagous to her previous condition of trance. She fully believed that her end had come, and even advised her husband how to lay out her body when she had ceased to breathe. The funeral of a little girl of five was waiting. when the child's uncle made what is called the oculist's test. This consists in noting whether there be any difference in colour in the veins and arteries behind the eye. In life the veins are dark and blackish and the arteries bright and crimson, but at death this distinction entirely disappears. Under the light of the opthalinascope the difference in shade may be detected. The test convinced him that the child still

lived, and he refused to have the coJt'm closed. Two physicians were immediately summoned, and. every test known to science made. The results showed that ho was right. The doctors, after working several hours, using artificial respiration, electrical stimulation, injections of salt, and strong; heart stimulants, restored animation. Breathing returned, and the child, who was supposed to have succumbed to typhoid fever, eventually made' a slow but complete recovery. Two years ago a Nottingham>boy scout underwent a successful operation, but a day or two afterwards lapsed suddenly into a comatose state, and later, it was supposed, died. The little chap had written to a friend requesting that the letter might be posted if he died under the operation. The letter was sent with a covering one announcing his end, and in consequence the scouts postponed a social gathering.. Later, however, the doctor noticed a slight flush on the lad's cheeks. Tie made a very careful examination, and came to the conclusion that life was not. altogether i extinct. Restoratives were immediately applied, with the result that, after remaining for long hours in a death-like trance, the boy gradually came back to life. CONSCIOUS WHILE BEING BIIRIKD., Rather more than fifty years ago a lady, who since has long lived at Bournemouth, had the eerie experience of looking at her freshly-dug grave in Hadlow Churchyard. She was a child at the time, staying with relations in the neighbourhood of Tonbridge, and one day when at play she was accidentally struck on the head. This brought on a. kind j of brain paralysis, not so well under- \ stood then as now. She was , powerless to *speak or move. A I local doctor and specialist from I London agreed that her case was hopeless, and must speedily terminate fatally. Yet, although unable to speak or move, even to the flicker of an eyelid, the unfortunate ' sufferer was perfectly conscious of all - that went on around her. She ! knew, for instance, that her father, '

who had been lying seriously ill, was dead. She knew when the undertaker came to the house, but she was unable to make the faintest sign. Then the awful climax came when she heard the doctor and riur.se pronounce that death had claimed her also. She was quite cold and wholly immobile when the weeping nurse began to lay her out. Yet she was conscious of everything. She heard the woman toll her mother that she had been dead for hours.

A lifetime of hopeless struggle ami agony scorned to crowd into the few moments when her mother stoop-

Ed to kiss her cold brow. Then the spell broke. Something seemed to snap within the poor sufferer's brain. She opened her eyes, and was thus snatched, as it were, from the .very jaws of the grave. A few days afterwards she had the strange experience of examining the grave when; she was to have been

buried