A STRANGE STORY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1764, 17 July 1888, Page 3

A STRANGE STORY.

Mr Robert Bacon tells the following strange story in a letter to the Southland Times: Pome 11 yearß ago a man named Drysdale, a dry Salter in the Octagon, Dunedin, had been missing for five days, and as he could not be heard of search parties had been out four days looking after him. On the sixth morning my son, a lad of 18 years of age, found him and drew my attention to him. fle was in his laboratory in a sitting position on a cbair which was leaning against a table, with his head thrown back, his arms hanging down, the body being cold and rigid. Immediately I went to Dr Murphy, in Stuart street. He was leaving to see a patient and did not appear to thank me for the job. However, he came with me, and used the general tests —namely, he put a lighted match to the pupil of the eye, felt for a pulse and action of the heart, put a looking glass to" the nostrils and mouth, without discovering signs of life. We laid him out, and my son and myself were told off by Dr Murphy to stay by the body until he came back, After the doctor had gone I said to my son, in a joke —"I wonder if there is any vitality left in the body." I put the test that was commonly known to the ancients, and immediately the eyes began to move, respiration commenced, and in five minutes I got Drysdale to sit propped up. Imagine the fix I was in ; I dare not move this resurrected body. If it was to get away I should be answerable ; and if it should not be found the friends would swear I had sold it for dissection t I told my son to hold him and not let him go out while I went to see if I could get someone to go for Dr Murphy. Going to the end of the right-of-way I saw Dr Hulme and another gentleman (I think it was Mr strode). They came with me to where Mr Drysdale was, and I advised them to convey him to the hospital, and, while there was vitality in the body, to assist nature by giving injections of beef tea and brandy. They told me they dare not, after a doctor had pronounced him dead. Dr Hulme went after Dr Murphy and brought him, and to his surprise found Drysdale alive. He was conveyed to the hospital, got thoroughly round, and lived for three yearß afterwards. The ancients, and Bome of our moderns, have had a horror of being buried alive. For instance, bulwer Lytton and Churles Dickens in their wills ordered that their bodies should be kept a length of time after the usual time allowed by custom.