PREMATURE BURIALS. 



393 



Brotliers of Charity, speaks in his memoirs of the frequency of pre- 

 mature burials in Italy, "Ah, merciful God !" he exclaims piously, 

 " how many living men and women are annually taken to their graves 

 in this Christian country ! " Camillo was of opinion that the victims 

 might be numbered by many scores — nay, by hundreds — in the course 

 of a single year. 



One day, after visiting the beds of the sick in a certain hospital in 

 Lombardy, of which the name has been left in blank, Camillo entered 

 the morgue, and found strewed upon the floor a great number of corpses, 

 one of which was bleeding profusely from the head. " A dead man 

 can not bleed in this way," thought Camillo, and had the body taken 

 to another room, and there examined. The man was alive, and but 

 for an accident would have received burial. He had been thrown to 

 the ground with some violence a short time previously, and, then and 

 there receiving the wound above alluded to, recovered consciousness. 

 But he only survived his sentence of death three days ; he died of 

 the blow which had awakened him from his trance. 



But there are double deaths — twofold burials — which are perhaps 

 the most horrible of all. Society thinks it is burying one person, but 

 the " deceased," being a woman, may from the point of view of ma- 

 ternity include two lives, or even more. Gasparo Rejes tells the story 

 of a child born in the tomb whose mother was buried alive. The lady 

 was the wife of a man of property named Francesco Orvallos, and 

 " died," while far advanced in pregnancy, during her husband's ab- 

 sence. Orvallos, returning home the day after the funeral, had the 

 tomb opened, not because he suspected foul play, but because he wished 

 to gaze once more on the face of his beloved. The lady was in truth 

 dead, but death had transpired in the grave. A child, struggling into 

 existence, met the gaze of the bereaved husband, and was removed with- 

 out difficulty by a medical assistant. The mother was once more con- 

 signed to the dust, but the child lived to be a man, and, carrying till 

 his death the name of " Fruit of the Earth," occupied for several years 

 the post of lieutenant-general on the frontiers of Cherez, This story 

 is reproduced by the late Professor Comi in his treatise on " Apneol- 

 ogy." Those who doubt it have only to read the following account 

 of what is called "Involuntary Homicide," which happened in the 

 south of Italy (at Castel del Giudice) in November last, and of which , 

 accounts were published at the time in the Neapolitan and English 

 papers : 



A poor woman at Castel del Giudice, in the province of Molise, was 

 taken ill with the premonitory symptoms of childbirth, and, having 

 fainted away while the doctor was being sent for, was, on his arrival, 

 declared dead. Burial follows death very rapidly in southern coun- 

 tries, especially in Italy : it is the night of the tomb setting in without 

 the twilight of the death-chamber ; and eight-and-forty hours in the 

 north of Italy, and four-and-twenty in the south, is the time allowed 



