Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/410

 builders and contractors, coffins have been opened with the pickaxe, in the act of converting cemeteries into streets and gardens. Here a grave has been discovered whose inmate has turned in its shroud; here a corpse clutching its hair in a strained and unnatural position: dead men and dead women lying in their graves as dead men never lie in a Christian land at the moment of burial. The presumption is, that these people have been legally murdered.

A few months ago a young and beautiful woman, on the eve of her marriage with the man she loved, was buried in the neighborhood of Lodi, in Piedmont, in accordance with the doctor's certificate. The doctor was of opinion that the girl had died from excitement—overjoy, it is said, at the prospect of being married, but the legal name for the catastrophe was disease of the heart, and with this verdict her place in society was declared vacant. When the first shovelful of earth was thrown down on the coffin, strange noises were heard proceeding therefrom, "as of evil spirits disputing over the body of the dead." The grave-diggers took to flight, and the mourners began praying; but the bridegroom, less superstitious than the others, insisted on the coffin being unnailed. This was done; but too late: the girl was found in an attitude of horror and pain impossible to describe; her eyes wide open, her teeth clinched, her hands clutching her hair. Life was extinct; but, when laid in her shroud the day before, her eyes were closed, her hands were folded on her breast as if in prayer.

The "Medical Academy" of Milan, in one of its weekly reports, published on Wednesday, March 22, 1848, quotes a case of trance which occurred to an ex-nun of the suppressed convent of St. Orsola, named Lucia Marini. The lady was taken ill, and, to all outward appearance, died: she was known to be subject to a peculiar kind of fit, which required peculiar treatment, and was staying at the time of the catastrophe in the house of a friend, who had been a nun. The becchini (grave-diggers, who in this case were the undertakers) insisted on burying the body before night; the surviving ex-nun remonstrated, urging that she must first try the effect of friction and mustard-plasters applied to feet and stomach. Fearing to lose their fee, the men of death waxed wroth in their contention, and, seizing the body by the shoulders, were about to drag it out of its bed, when the "dead lady," moaning and muttering inarticulate sounds, turned restlessly on her pillow. The friend of Lucia Marini broke out into prayers, interrupted by tears; the men let go their hold, and one of them (the elder of the two) crossed himself devoutly. The other, with a great oath, declared it was "spasms"; the dead, in his opinion, being liable to convulsive movements if not properly straightened. But humanity prevailed over ignorance, and cupidity gave way to medical skill. The lady was thoroughly revived by a medical practitioner of the neighborhood, and lived for many a long day to tell the story of her escape from the tomb.