STRANGE MENTAL FACULTIES IN DISEASE. 179 



for his funeral. Not only were his friends deceived in his case, which 

 was one of coma, but he himself was doubly illusioned, for he both 

 thought that he was dead and that his spirit had entered paradise. 

 His soul, as he thought, was borne aloft, to celestial altitudes, and 

 was enraptured with visions of the Deity and angelic hosts. He 

 seemed to dwell in an enchanted region of limitless light and incon- 

 ceivable splendor. At last an angel came to him and told him that 

 he- must go back. Darkness, like an overawing shadow, shut out 

 the celestial glories, and, full of sudden horror, he uttered a deep 

 groan. This dismal utterance was heard by those around him, and 

 prevented him from being buried alive, after all the preparations had 

 been made for the removal of the body. 



In certain forms of physical prostration, the mind seems to the 

 patient to be capable of unusual freedom; to be in and out of the 

 body at the same time, to be able to make impressions at a distance, 

 and to have a knowledge of itself and of events transpiring around 

 it quite beyond the usual range of the faculties. In analyzing these 

 seeming powers, it is impossible to separate the imaginary from 

 what may be real, and to determine the exact limit of mental action. 

 Plutarch relates that a certain profligate and profane man, named 

 Thespesius, fell from a great height and was taken up apparently 

 dead. He remained in a state of seeming insensibility for three days, 

 but on the day appointed for the funeral unexpectedly revived, and 

 from this time a remarkable change was observed in his moral con- 

 duct and character. On inquiry being made as to the cause of the 

 sudden reformation, he said that, in his state of apparent insensi- 

 bility, he had been made so clearly to see the relation of mind to 

 matter as to be convinced of the future existence of the soul. After 

 his injury he had supposed himself to be dead, and his spirit to be 

 separated from the body. He had seemed to float in an abysm of 

 light, and to be surrounded by spirits transcendently bright and glo- 

 rious. One of the latter at last announced to him that he must return 

 to the flesh again, when he suddenly seemed to reappear on earth, as 

 a being from another world. In 1733, Johann Schwerzeger, after a 

 long illness, fell into a comatose state, from which he recovered. He 

 said that he had seen as in a vision his whole life pass before him, even 

 events which, before his sickness, he seemed to have quite forgotten. 

 He further stated that he thought he was about to enter a state of 

 rest and happiness, when he was recalled to the world; that he was 

 sorry to have come back, but that he should remain here but two days. 

 His death fulfilled the prediction. 



But perhaps the most remarkable of all phenomena of this nature 

 is a certain power a few patients have seemed to possess of " with- 

 drawing from sensation," of becoming at will insensible to pain, and 

 of producing a resemblance of death. Colonel Townsend, an English- 

 man, who died at the end of the last century, had in his last sickness the 



