"Edgar Allan Poe - The Premature Burial" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

appeared. He was then seemingly dead; but he sat nearly erect within
his coffin, the lid of which, in his furious struggles, he had
partially uplifted.
He was forthwith conveyed to the nearest hospital, and there
pronounced to be still living, although in an asphytic condition.
After some hours he revived, recognized individuals of his
acquaintance, and, in broken sentences spoke of his agonies in the
grave.
From what he related, it was clear that he must have been
conscious of life for more than an hour, while inhumed, before lapsing
into insensibility. The grave was carelessly and loosely filled with
an exceedingly porous soil; and thus some air was necessarily
admitted. He heard the footsteps of the crowd overhead, and endeavored
to make himself heard in turn. It was the tumult within the grounds of
the cemetery, he said, which appeared to awaken him from a deep sleep,
but no sooner was he awake than he became fully aware of the awful
horrors of his position.
This patient, it is recorded, was doing well and seemed to be in a
fair way of ultimate recovery, but fell a victim to the quackeries
of medical experiment. The galvanic battery was applied, and he
suddenly expired in one of those ecstatic paroxysms which,
occasionally, it superinduces.
The mention of the galvanic battery, nevertheless, recalls to my
memory a well known and very extraordinary case in point, where its
action proved the means of restoring to animation a young attorney
of London, who had been interred for two days. This occurred in
1831, and created, at the time, a very profound sensation wherever
it was made the subject of converse.
The patient, Mr. Edward Stapleton, had died, apparently of typhus
fever, accompanied with some anomalous symptoms which had excited
the curiosity of his medical attendants. Upon his seeming decease, his
friends were requested to sanction a post-mortem examination, but
declined to permit it. As often happens, when such refusals are
made, the practitioners resolved to disinter the body and dissect it
at leisure, in private. Arrangements were easily effected with some of
the numerous corps of body-snatchers, with which London abounds;
and, upon the third night after the funeral, the supposed corpse was
unearthed from a grave eight feet deep, and deposited in the opening
chamber of one of the private hospitals.
An incision of some extent had been actually made in the abdomen,
when the fresh and undecayed appearance of the subject suggested an
application of the battery. One experiment succeeded another, and
the customary effects supervened, with nothing to characterize them in
any respect, except, upon one or two occasions, a more than ordinary
degree of life-likeness in the convulsive action.
It grew late. The day was about to dawn; and it was thought
expedient, at length, to proceed at once to the dissection. A student,
however, was especially desirous of testing a theory of his own, and
insisted upon applying the battery to one of the pectoral muscles. A
rough gash was made, and a wire hastily brought in contact, when the