406 HISTORY OF 



country people think that the parts strive to join together 

 again. Also birds will flutter a great while after their 

 heads are pulled off; and the hearts of living creatures will 

 pant a long time after they are plucked out. I remember 

 I have seen the heart of one that was bowelled, as suffer 

 ing for high treason, that being cast into the tire, leaped at 

 the first at least a foot and half in height, and after, by 

 degrees, lower and lower, for the space, as I remember, of 

 seven or eight minutes. There is also an ancient and cre 

 dible tradition of an ox lowing after his bowels were plucked 

 out. But there is a more certain tradition of a man, who 

 being under -the executioner s hand for high treason, after 

 his heart was plucked out, and in the executioner s hand, 

 was heard to utter three or four words of prayer ; which 

 therefore we said to be more credible than that of the ox 

 in sacrifice, because the friends of the party suffering do 

 usually give a reward to the executioner to dispatch his 

 office with the more speed, that they may the sooner be rid 

 of their pain ; but in sacrifices, we see no cause why the 

 priest should be so speedy in his office. 



33. For reviving those again which fall into sudden 

 swoonings and catalepses of astonishments (in which fits 

 many, without present help, would utterly expire), these 

 things are used, putting into their mouths water distilled 

 of wine, which they call hot waters, and cordial waters, 

 bending the body forward, stopping the mouth and nostrils 

 hard, bending or wringing the fingers, pulling the hairs of 

 the beard or head, rubbing of the parts, especially the face 

 and legs, .sudden casting of cold water upon the face, 

 shrieking out aloud, and suddenly ; putting rosewater to 

 the nostrils, with vinegar in faintings ; burning of feathers, 

 or cloth, in the suffocation of the mother ; but especially a 

 fryingpan heated red hot, is good in apoplexies ; also a 

 close embracing of the body hath helped some. 



34. There have been many examples of men in show 

 dead, either laid out upon the cold floor, or carried forth 

 to burial ; nay, of some buried in the earth ; which not 

 withstanding have lived again, which hath been found in 

 those that were buried (the earth being afterwards opened) 

 by the bruising and wounding of their head, through the 

 struggling of the body within the coffin ; whereof the most 

 recent and memorable example was that of Joannes Scotus, 

 called the subtile, and a schoolman, who being digged up 

 again by his servant (unfortunately absent at his burial, 

 and who knew his master s manner in such fits), was found 



