224 NATURE AND MAN. 



days having been stipulated for on the part of the devotee ; but 

 the officer, fearing that he might incur blame if the result should 

 be fatal, had the fakeer dug out on the third day, without any 

 previous notice. In each case we have the testimony of British 

 medical officers as to the condition of the body when exhumed ; 

 and in this all the narratives agree. Its appearance was perfectly 

 corpse-like ; no pulsation could be detected either in the heart or 

 in the arteries (there was no stethoscopy in those days) ; and 

 there were no perceptible movements of breathing. The means 

 of restoration employed by the attendants of the saint were just 

 what we should ourselves employ in a case of " suspended anima- 

 tion ; " namely, friction of the surface, the application of warmth, 

 and the administration of stimulants as soon as the power of 

 swallowing returned. 



Still it may be said that it is so intrinsically improbable, not 

 to say impossible, that a state of apparent death could be self- 

 induced in the first instance, and could then endure for weeks (to 

 say nothing of months) without the absolute loss of vitality, that 

 it is more likely that even these most competent and trustworthy 

 witnesses were deceived, than that the facts really happened as 

 narrated by them. And a determined sceptic might feel himself 

 justified in likening their narratives to the wonderful stories told 

 by Marco Polo, as to the chain thrown up into the air, the 

 climbing-up of this chain by a boy until he was out of sight, the 

 falling to the ground of his head, body, and limbs in separate 

 pieces, and their spontaneous reunion, so that the boy got up 

 and walked alive and whole in the presence of a circle of 

 spectators. 



But the scientific physiologist, as in the preceding instance, 

 sees a clue to the rational explanation of the cases of the buried 

 fakeers ; which leads him to view the testimony given in regard 

 to them by the cautious, sceptical, and well-informed witnesses 

 who vouch for them, in a very different light from that of the 

 wonder-loving traveller of the middle ages. 



In the first place, the state of " suspended animation " or 

 "apparent death" is one of which the existence cannot be 

 denied; since it is continually produced by drowning, and some- 

 times occurs spontaneously. And that such a state might be 



