On not being dead

Guardian Angel and its theme....

The main scenario of this book, namely the apparent death of the heroine and her subsequent full recovery, may seem to be an unlikely one, but it is by no means impossible. There is even a medical name for it -- the Lazarus Syndrome, named after the man whom Christ is reputed to have raised from the dead. There are many recorded instances of successful resuscitations and even spontaneous “awakenings” of those assumed to be dead, and many learned scientific papers on the subject. A key factor in survival seems to be the cooling down of the body and the gradual slowing of all the vital functions to the point where all signs of life appear to be extinguished. The same principle is used in cryosurgery. The greatest danger in resuscitation is that once a clinical death has occurred, brain damage (usually irreversible) will occur if resuscitation does not take place within a few minutes.

It should be remembered that the three key indicators of clinical death in the mid nineteenth century were lack of breath, lack of pulse, and lack of eye movements. Examinations of “dead” people were often cursory and unreliable. In Victorian times there was a dread of being buried alive, and patent coffins were even marketed which would allow “dead” people to alert the outside world if they suddenly woke up and found that they were six feet under! There were many Gothic horror novels in the Victorian period based on the theme of death and resurrection. The Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive (it really did exist!) encouraged a practice whereby the deceased were left lying in their caskets for days or weeks on end before being deemed sufficently dead to bury. When the Duke of Wellington died in 1858, this macabre postponement ritual reached an extreme. The Duke was not buried until two months after his death.