[63] _La Muerte Real y Apparente_, 4th ed., p. 21. Madrid, 1911.
[64] _Quaestiones Physiologicae-Theologicae_, disp. 3, p. 2, c. 3, a. 3.
An infant born apparently dead may be resuscitated after a delay very much longer than would be possible in an older person, provided always the infant has not begun to breathe.
Ferreres mistakes cases of catalepsy which have recovered consciousness for cases of apparent somatic death. In these cataleptic conditions the blood circulation does not completely cease--if it did the nervous centres would be disintegrated. The case he reports on p. 26,[65] of the woman resuscitated by Rigaudeaux in 1748, was one of catalepsy, if it ever happened. The same is true of the case from Gaspar de los Reyes,[66] which probably had some foundation in a condition of catalepsy, but which more probably is a sheer invention by Reyes. It looks like an anecdote from a medieval Florentine _novella_.
Old writers speak of cessation of the pulse for long periods. Ballonius[67] mentions a person in whom there was no pulse for fourteen days before death; Ramazzini[68] describes a cessation of the pulse for four days before dissolution; Schenck[69] tells of a disappearance of the pulse for three days, with recovery. These all were apparently cataleptic cases, where the circulation was very feeble and the radial pulse was not palpable. Cheyne gives an account of a Colonel Townsend who had the power of apparently dying at will. He could so suspend the heart action that no pulse could be felt, and after a short while the circulation would become normal again. The longest period in which he remained in this condition was about thirty minutes. St. Augustine mentions a priest named Rutilutus who had a power like that of Colonel Townsend, and Caillé[70] reported a similar case.
[69] _Observationum Medicarum_, etc. Frankfort, 1600.
[70] _New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal_, xvi.
The fakirs of India carry this power to great lengths. Braid,[71] on the authority of a Sir Claude Wade, says a fakir was buried unconscious at Lahore in 1837, and the grave was guarded day and night by sentinels from an English regiment. Six weeks after the burial the man was dug up and he presented all the appearance of a corpse. The legs and arms were shrunken and stiff, and the head reclined on the shoulder, as happens in corpses. There was no perceptible circulation anywhere, yet he revived.