“Men have recovered from simulated death after being in the sea twenty minutes, and I see no reason why, after disease, men may not also be recovered from a state resembling death. Many who are left as dead are only in fainting fits, some are in trances; and graves have been opened where the buried man has been found to have eaten portions of his own flesh, which of course he could not have done unless recovery had taken place. How horrible to think that we may awake up in our graves tormented with the pangs of hunger, unable scarce to breathe, and finding all escape from our narrow cell impossible; the prisoner in his grave has nought to do but to commend his soul afresh to his Maker, and lay himself down to die! May not much of this be prevented by asylums for doubtful life, by the application of reagents, and by building vaults in our cemeteries instead of graves? I earnestly hope that the day has arrived when we see these things in the proper light; when our church-yards will be no longer overloaded with the remains of those who, perhaps, might have lived had they been left a little longer above ground--had they been transfused, or even buried in vaults instead of graves, with a guardian to watch over their mortal remains! Life may exist, but not be evident; but the non-evidence of life is no proof of death, as many have been recovered in whom life was only latent--in whom there was no action of the heart, no respiration, no motion, no sensation. This has happened after drowning, in infants born asphyxiated, in women after flooding, and would happen much more often were the proper means applied in all cases to recall life, and to ascertain those who may be recoverable. Simple inspection is not enough to decide if a man be dead or not, because persons are often only in trances or fainting fits when they are thought to be dead; and I wish to insist on the fact that there is no sign of death but decomposition, and that, therefore, none should be buried until this sign be present, nor until an attestation of the presence of decomposition be given by some surgeon.”