Premature burial and how it may be prevented : with special reference to trance, catalepsy, and other forms of suspended animation / by William Tebb and Edward Perry Vollum.

  • William Tebb
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Premature burial and how it may be prevented : with special reference to trance, catalepsy, and other forms of suspended animation / by William Tebb and Edward Perry Vollum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    352/412 (page 344)
    still living and moving, was 'bandaged' beneath the chin, and ' laid-out' at St. Pancras Workhouse. Allow me to state that in the Lancet, vol. ii., 1850, a contribution from me ' On the Danger of Tying-up the Lower Jaw- immediately after Supposed Death' was published. An infant, aged two months, was brought to me on a Friday with the lower jaw tied up by its mother, who asked for a certificate of death ; but on my removing the bandage, the child began to show symptoms of vitality, and it lived until the following Monday. C. J. B. Aldis, M.D., F.R.C.P. Chester Terrace, Chester Square, March 26, 1866. It is recorded that Dr. Doddridge showed so little signs of life at his birth that he was laid aside as dead, but one of the attendants ^observing some signs of life, took the baby under her charge, and by her judicious treat- ment perfectly restored it. Mr. Highmore, Secretary of the London Lying-in Hospital, confirmed (by a communication to the Royal Humane Society, April, 1816,) the statement of Mrs. Catherine Widgen, the matron of that excellent establishment, that, by a zealous perseverance in the means recommended by that Society, she had been the happy instrument of restoring from a state of apparent death in the space of three years no less than forty-five infants, who, but for her humane attention and indefatigable exertions, must have been consigned to the grave. Later on, Mrs. Widgen restored in one year twenty-seven apparently dead-born children—a striking instance of the truth of the remark of a celebrated writer (Osiander) that the generality of infants, considered as still-born, are only apparently so ; if, therefore, persons would persevere in their exertions to revive them, most of them might be restored.—Report of the Royal Htimane Society, 1816-1J, pp. S^-54- For these exertions the General Court adjudged the Honorary Medallion to INIrs. Widgen, and it was accordingly presented to her by His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent.^'—Ibid., p. ^2. [The question naturally suggests itself in this place : If the matron of such a noble institvition as the above was able to save seventy-two apparently dead children from the grave in four years, how many of these poor little beings are consigned to the grave all over the world for lack of the humane attention and indefatigable exertions, such as this skilful matron gave to those that came under her intelligent care ?] recurrence of suspended animation. A child, who had a cough for some time, was suddenly attacked with difficulty of breathing, and to all appearances died. A medical gentleman