Sick Man Tramps Home To Die

1916

Recovers Good Health and Is Now Hiking Back.

MIDLAND, Texas — Alonzo Meredith, who hails from Savannah, Ga., passed thru Midland en route to California, pulling a small two wheeled cart containing his bedding and cooking utensils and tells the following story:

"Doctors in Frisco told me to go home last April; that I would be dead of the T. B. (tuberculosis) in another sixty days. I had spent all my money and to go home was out of the question. However, I was obsessed of the idea to try and walk the distance. I started and before I had made the first hundred miles I began to gather strength. I had money to eat on, but slept out nights. After making the distance to Indio, California, I was able to work. I gained strength and continued my journey. I walked to New Orleans and was examined there in the charity hospital for 'bugs' and was pronounced cured. I am now on my way back and upon reaching there will double back again, as I want to make sure of the cure."

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 11.

The Life Insurance Cure

1900

Result of a Dying Bachelor's Plan For a Novel Funeral

"I don't know that life insurance is a cure for disease," said the retired life insurance solicitor, "but I know of an instance which makes it look that way. In the town where I first began business was a bachelor of about 50 years, who was quite alone in the world and had some years before taken out a $5,000 policy on himself for the benefit of a maiden sister, who had died a year before the events of this story. He kept his policy going, however, because it was a good way to save money, and one day he was taken down with some kind of fever. He grew worse day after day, until one day the doctor told him that he would in all likelihood be dead within the next 24 hours.

"This suggested his life insurance money, all he had to leave, and he immediately began to talk with the doctor on the subject of a proper disposal of it. He concluded after some thought that the best thing to do with it was to blow it on a tremendous big funeral for himself, including a banquet for all the people he knew. This was an entirely new idea for a funeral, and when the doctor left him that night to the care of his nurse his mind was entirely occupied with his funeral. He talked to the nurse about it, and when the nurse made him stop he lay and thought about it. In fact, he became so much interested in the details of his funeral that he quite forgot about having to die to make it possible.

"In the morning when the doctor came he found his patient in a wild perspiration and his pulse beating in much better fashion than it had been doing for some days. He also found the general condition of the patient much improved. He was greatly astonished and at once began to ask questions. The patient told him with eager interest of a lot of new things he had thought of for the funeral and some that bothered him a good deal and said he had been thinking of it all night. Then the doctor laughed and told him he guessed the funeral would have to be postponed, for he wasn't going to die just then anyhow. Nor did he, and he isn't dead yet, but he is married and has his policy paid up for his wife's benefit." - Chicago Inter Ocean.

Embalmer's Knife Flashing, Mom Insists Son "Alive"; He is!

Rhode Island, 1888

COFFINED, BUT ALIVE

Story of a Man Who had a Narrow Escape from Premature Burial

Mauly Z. Corwin, of Providence, R. I., has enjoyed the sensation of being coffined and prepared for burial, says the Boston Globe. But for an accident he would have been embalmed. He lives on Smith's hill, and is a carpenter by trade. Some years ago he was at work on the roof of a three-story house, and had a sun-stroke. Falling at his work, he rolled down the sloping roof and fell, an inert mass, to the street below. He was picked up and conveyed to the office of the nearest medical man, who pronounced him dead. An undertaker was sent for, and soon his assistants were measuring the corpse and making preparations for the embalming process, which was considered necessary for preserving the body for the funeral.

That evening a casket arrived with the name of the deceased, age and manner of death engraved on a silver plate.

After the body had been coffined and the room cleared, Mrs. Corwin, the mother, arrived, and, while laying her head upon his breast, she fancied she detected a motion of the heart. Another doctor was sent for, who, after making a stethoscopic examination, confirmed the opinion of the other physician, and declared life to be extinct.

The weeping mother was led from the apartment, and the watchers awaited the coming of the embalmer. The man was delayed so long that when he arrived the family requested him to postpone making the incision until the following morning.

The morning found the loving and disconsolate mother at her son's bier again, and again did the maternal instinct within her tell her that her boy was not dead, but sleeping. The embalmer came and displayed his instruments for opening the veins and for eviscerating the deceased. Then the mother refused to allow the operation. In vain they urged her to accept the verdict of medical science, but she refused to budge, and, throwing her body across that of her son, she declared she would not leave his presence until all doubt was ended. The weather was fearfully hot, and it was expected that the condition of the corpse would be unendurable by the next night, but it was not, nor the next night, and then some weight was attached to the old lady's belief. More doctors came, other examinations were made, and at the end of the sixth day a slight pulsation was felt.

The man was alive beyond all doubt.

The house swarmed with physicians after that. They came from New York, from Boston and from Philadelphia, and all agreed that the vital spark had not left the body, although how to fan it into a life-sustaining flame was a question not so easily settled. Various expedients were resorted to, and on the fifteenth day the "corpse" opened an eye. After that the man's recovery was but a question of time. To-day he is at work, a better and stronger man than he ever was, and the silver plate on his coffin, framed in crimson plush, adorns his parlor.

—St. Joseph Herald, Saint Joseph, Michigan, April 28, 1888, p. 5.

Modern Surgery For The Battlefield – Saving Many Lives

1916

Saving The Soldier – Wonderful Accomplishments of Modern Surgery

German System So Perfect That Desperately Wounded Men Are Restored to Service in Comparatively Short Time

With their characteristic thoroughness the Germans have set themselves to the task of saving every wounded soldier sent back from the front who is not beyond their aid. They are accomplishing wonderful results and thousands of disabled soldiers are soon restored to health and sent back to the firing line, who might have perished miserably were it not for the scientific management of German hospital work.

There is no neglect of the wounded. From the time a man is hurt on the battlefield until he is installed in a hospital, perhaps far away from the scene of his injury, all that could possibly be done for him before he reaches the hospital has been accomplished by skilled hands and when he reaches his destination competent surgeons, who specialize in the kind of wound he has received, begin the final work of healing.

Instead of being the most common operation Ii war surgery, amputation is not practiced now, except as the last resort. Antiseptic treatment has so minimized the danger of infection that the most desperately wounded soldiers are saved and dismissed from the hospitals with, their full complement of limbs.

Not only are German surgeons doing splendid work, but American, French, English and Austrian surgeons are everyday performing remarkable operations. Recently an operation was performed by Prof. Albert Tietze on a soldier who had a serious wound in his head. After a large fragment of shell had been removed the X-rays showed that a small piece of shell remained. Professor Tietze said this particle could not safely be left in the skull because it might become dislodged in future years and cause instant death.

It was suggested that a magnet be used to draw out the splinter. There was no instrument of the sort available, but engineers of the telegraphic division soon made an electro-magnet. A motor, formerly used for running a threshing machine, and a dynamo were requisitioned. The physician took an iron wand, highly polished, and connected it with a coil. The wand was inserted in the soldier's skull and the fragment of shell was easily withdrawn as it clung to the end of the iron.

A Wild Leap in the Dark Over A Precipice

1916

Climax to the Reckless Ride of a Fearless Horseman

HIS WILD LEAP IN THE DARK

It Carried Horse and Rider Pact the Edge of a Sheer Cliff to a Tall of Two Hundred and Fifty Feet to the Rocks and Water Below, Yet the Man Lived

Perhaps the most extraordinary fall that a human being ever survived is that described by Thormanby in his "Sporting Stories." The lucky man was Colonel William Yorke Moore, a British officer, who rode his horse in the dark over a sheer precipice 247 feet in height and came out alive! It seems incredible that such a fearful experience should result in anything but instant death, yet here are the facts, which once again confirm the adage that truth is more wonderful than fiction:

Colonel Moore, who commanded the troops at Dominica, lost his way one evening after sunset. In complete darkness he endeavored to make his way home. Two or three times he had difficulty in making his horse cross obstacles, and at last they came to something that the horse would not face.

Colonel Moore was a fearless rider. Again and again he rode his horse at full speed against the unknown obstacle, but in vain. At last, urged fiercely by whip and spur, the terrified animal, with a snort of terror, cleared the low hedge — for such the obstruction proved to be — and went over the cliff.

Colonel Moore says that during his flight on horseback through the air every event of his whole life seemed to pass in a luminous panorama before him. Suddenly there came a terrific concussion, which deprived him of his senses and left him with his legs in the sea and his body on the rocks, apparently dead.

He must have lain there stunned for some hours, for when at last the lapping water and the cool breezes restored him the moon was shining brightly in midheaven, and its beams fell upon the upturned, glittering shoes of his gallant horse, which lay dead and mangled beside him.

As soon as he had collected his scattered wits Colonel Moore coolly began to examine himself to ascertain what injuries he had sustained. He found that he was severely cut about the body and head, that his right ankle was dislocated and that his back was benumbed or paralyzed by the concussion of his fall.

When the sun rose it shone upon his bare, bleeding head with such intolerable heat that, as a protection from its rays, he tied his cotton handkerchief about his forehead. Above his head projected the two ends of the knotted bandage stained crimson with his blood.

After lying in horrible pain for several hours he spied a boatful of natives rowing toward the spot where he lay. As they came near he hailed them in a faint voice, but the moment they saw the ghastly figure of the colonel, with his bloody headdress, they set up a yell and rowed away as if 20,000 fiends were after them.

After some time a single black man came clambering over the rocks, intent on catching fish. He was within a few yards of the colonel when the latter hailed him. The moment he caught sight of the bleeding head and the blood stained bandage he, too, uttered a fearful yell, flung down his rod and line and scrambled off over the rocks as fast as his feet and hands would carry him.

The colonel now began to resign himself to the prospect of a lingering death, but fortunately his English servant, alarmed at his master's absence, went in search of him and, following the horse's tracks, at last came to the edge of the precipice.

The sudden disappearance of the hoof prints near the low hedge fence convinced him that an accident had happened. He ran to the barracks and got out a boat, which a party of soldiers rowed to the foot of the cliff.

Very tenderly and carefully the soldiers lifted the colonel into the boat and brought him back to the barracks. For some months he lay in great pain and danger, but in time the paralyzed muscles of his back recovered, and eventually he was restored to complete health. Not even the slightest touch of lameness remained to remind him of his fall.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 6.