ALIVE IN A COFFIN.

Otaki Mail, Volume XXVIII, 29 March 1920, Page 4

ALIVE IN A COFFIN.

WOMAN'S STRANGE CASE. SEXTON'S GRIM DISCOVERY. Thecase of a living woman who was place! in a coffin apparently dead and awakening just before a post mortem examination was to be made, came to light in Berlin recently. The ease was evidently one of veronal poisoning.

A hospital nurse named Minna Hraun. aged 25, was found lying under the trees in the Grunewald Forest, between Berlin and Potsdamc, by the driver of a motor car belonging to the Armistice Commission. Who was soaked to the skin, and ceased to breathe before taken to a doctor. The doctor tried all possible tests, including the well-known sealing-wax test. All massage and other methods of restoring breathing proved unavailing, and after long efforts the doctor declared life to be extinct.

The young woman was accordingly taken to a mortuary chapel, where a post-mortem examination was to have taken place owing to certain marks of strangulation ou the throat and indications of poisoning. Alive, but Unconscious. The police doctor, sexton, and two grave-diggers went to the mortuary chapel aad removed the coffin lid, and were about to lift our, the body when the sexfon, to his horror, felt a slight movement ot the heart. Instantly the girl was carried to the hospital and plunged into a hot bath and treated with electric massage. Presently she opened her eye-, said a few unintelligible words, and then fell again into a stupor, from which she has not yet awakened, though if there are no complications i~~;~ hoped .she vri.ll live. Professor Rautenberg, who i- in (huree of tae case, said: "It is one of those very rare cases where literally every sign of life is extinct, rigor morris having apparently h ' n - n - : He refused to express an opinion of the cause, but added thai veronal poisonAu unhappy love affair :s assumed, nltheggh the. woman had not yet been able to make a statement. Some medical authorities state that veronal poisoning, acting or, hysterical person-.