THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 283 



Donnet, in the Senate, told his own story of the circumstances under 

 which he narrowly escaped being buried alive. 



Besides these instances of premature burial in which the victim 

 escaped the fearful consequences of the mistake made, others may be 

 cited in which the blunder was discovered only too late. Quite a 

 number of such cases are known, some of which are told with details 

 too romantic to entitle them to implicit belief, while, however, many 

 of them show unquestionable signs of authenticity. There long pre- 

 vailed a tradition, not easily traceable to any source, which attributed 

 the death of the Abbe Prevost to a mistake of this kind. All his 

 biographers relate that the famous author of " Manon Lescaut," falling 

 senseless from the effect of a rush of blood, in the heart of the forest 

 of Chantilly, was supposed to be dead ; that then the surgeon of the 

 village having made an incision into his stomach, by direction of the 

 magistrate, to ascertain the cause of death, Prevost uttered a cry, and 

 did then die in earnest. But it has since been proved that the story 

 is imaginary, and that it was made up after Prevost's death ; nor do 

 any of the necrological accounts published at the time refer it to the 

 consequences of a j)reniature autopsy. Though the account of Prevost 

 dissected alive seems doubtful, that is not the case with the story told 

 with regard to an operation by the famous accoucheur, Philip Small. 

 A woman, about to be confined, fell into a state of seeming death. 

 Small relates that when he was summoned to perform the Cesarean 

 operation, the by-standers, convinced that the woman was dead, urged 

 him to proceed with it. " I supposed so, too," he says, " for I felt no 

 pulse in the region of the heart, and a glass held over her face showed 

 no sign of respiration." Then he plunged his knife into the body, and 

 was cutting among the bleeding tissues, when the subject awoke from 

 her lethargy. 



We cite some still more startling instances. Thirty years ago, a 

 resident of the village of Eymes, in Dordogne, had been suffering for 

 a long time from a chronic disorder of little consequence in itself, but 

 marked by the distressing symptom of constant wakefulness, which 

 forbade the patient any kind of rest. Worn out with this condition, 

 he consulted a doctor, who prescribed opium, advising great caution 

 in its use. The invalid, possessed with that common-enough notion 

 that the efficacy of a drug is proportioned to its quantity, took at one 

 time a dose sufficient for several days. He soon fell into a deep sleep, 

 which continued unbroken for more than twenty-four hours. The vil- 

 lage doctor, being summoned, finds the body without warmth, the pidse 

 extinct, and, on opening the veins of both arms in succession, obtains 

 but a few drops of thick blood. The day after, they prepared for his 

 burial. But, a few days later, closer inquiry revealed the imprudence 

 the poor wretch had committed in taking an excessive quantity of the 

 prescribed narcotic. The report spreading among the villagers, they 

 insist on his disinterment, which is allowed. Gathering in a crowd, at 



