Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 2: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
Science
Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 2: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
the lid of the coffin was about to be nailed on. The thought that she
was to be buried alive was the first which gave activity to her mind,
and enabled it to operate on her corporeal frame."
Where the ears lose their capacity of being acted upon by stimuli, the
mind, by its operations in dreams, becomes a source of impressions
which again sets the wheels of life in motion. There is an account
published by Dr. Arnold, in his observations upon insanity[97], of a
certain John Engelbreght, a German, who was believed to be dead, and who
was evidently resuscitated by the exercises of his mind upon subjects
which were of a delightful or stimulating nature. This history shall
be taken from Mr. Engelbreght's words. "It was on Thursday noon (says
he), about twelve o'clock, when I perceived that death was making his
approaches upon me from the lower parts upwards, insomuch that my whole
body became stiff. I had no feeling left in my hands and feet, neither
in any other part of my whole body, nor was I at last able to speak or
see, for my mouth now becoming very stiff, I was no longer able to open
it, nor did I feel it any longer. My eyes also broke in my head in such
a manner that I distinctly felt it. For all that, I understood what
they said, when they were praying by me, and I distinctly heard them
say, feel his legs, how stiff and cold they have become. This I heard
distinctly, but I had no perception of their touch. I heard the watchman
cry 11 o'clock, but at 12 o'clock my hearing left me." After relating
his passage from the body to heaven with the velocity of an arrow shot
from a cross bow, he proceeds, and says, that as he was twelve hours in
dying, so he was twelve hours in returning to life. "As I died (says
he) from beneath upwards, so I revived again the contrary way, from
above to beneath, or from top to toe. Being conveyed back from the
heavenly glory, I began to hear something of what they were praying for
me, in the same room with me. Thus was my hearing the _first_ sense I
recovered. After this I began to have a perception of my eyes, so that,
by little and little, my whole body became strong and sprightly, and no
sooner did I get a feeling of my legs and feet, than I arose and stood
firm upon them with a firmness I had never enjoyed before. The heavenly
joy I had experienced, invigorated me to such a degree, that people were
astonished at my rapid, and almost instantaneous recovery."
[97] Vol. ii. p. 298.
The explanation I have given of the cause of resuscitation in this
man will serve to refute a belief in a supposed migration of the
soul from the body, in cases of apparent death. The imagination, it
is true, usually conducts the whole mind to the abodes of happy or
miserable spirits, but it acts here in the same way that it does when it
transports it, in common dreams, to numerous and distant parts of the
world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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