Mortification of the flesh

“ A continual trembling shook his hands; an abundant sweat dropped from his brow and bald head, streaming down his big face, colored like a faded rose, covered with fine network like the spleen of an ox. And he wore a number of scapularies suspended from his neck, with the picture of the Image spread over his abdomen. He wheezed and lamented as if already seized by the terrors of the impending death-agony; round about him was an unbearable stench, as of putrefying flesh; he exhaled from every pore the atrocious torments which the last palpitations of life caused him. ”

“ The odor of putrid flesh, the sight of the mutilated bodies repulsed him. When first his hand, warm in life, touched the clammy flesh of a corpse, he shuddered. Then when his fingers came in contact with the viscera of a cadaver, that of a little child, he cried out in horror. The demonstrator of anatomy urged him on; he finally was induced to dissect part of the infant. The reflex action on his sensitive mind first stunned, and then warped his senses. ”

“ The mutilated remains of a human face and body.
The greedy pike had cleared, not the features only, but the entire flesh off the face; but had left the hair, and the tight skin of the forehead, though their teeth had raked this last. The remnants they had left made what they had mutilated doubly horrible; since now it was not a skull, not a skeleton; but a face and a man gnawed down to the bones and hair and feet. ”

“ And within half an hour of death this putrescent poison so corrupts the flesh that it can be plucked from the bones like so much mucus. And what seems still more marvellous, if a man (e.g.) be scratched in the thigh, or higher in the body, by another point which is not poisoned, and the still warm blood as it flows down to the feet be merely touched by one of these poisoned little arrows, swift as wind the pestilent influence ascends to the wound, and with the same swiftness and other effects snatches the man from among the living. ”

“ Finally, they kindle a fire about them, and roast the miserable creatures with slow heat. Sometimes they pierce the flesh of the muscles with red-hot plates and with spits, or cut it off and devour it, half-burned and dripping with gore and blood. Next, they plant blazing torches all over the body, and especially in the gaping wounds; then, after scalping him they scatter ashes and live coals upon his naked head; then they tear the tendons of the arms and legs, lacerate them, or, after removing a little of the skin, leisurely cut them with a knife at the ankle and wrist. ”

“ The arrow-head remains in the flesh when the shaft is withdrawn, and if the poison is fresh, paralysis and death very quickly follow, the skin round the wound turning yellow and mortifying within an hour or two. ”

“ When the corpse is taken to the place of burning, they take knives, cut the flesh from the bones, and feed it to the vultures. These filthy birds will be perched near by, and will come down into the crowd to receive the coveted morsel, which they either carry off, or swallow upon the spot. After the flesh is thus taken off, the bones are burned.
Persons dying of cholera, small-pox, in childbirth, or any sudden disease, and by suicide, are not burned immediately, but are buried for a few months, and are then taken up and burned. ”

“ And the worms' gnawing, and thy body's rottenness,
And the rottenness in thy bones and in thy brain!
1st Corpse.
O beautiful, O dead, O spit upon,
He speaketh well that is but lately dead;
Thy flesh lies all along thee like green slime,
O pudding gravied in thine own dead sauce!
2nd Corpse.
Rotten one!
1st Corpse.
Dung-heap!
2nd Corpse.
Dead one!
1st Corpse.
Beast! beast! beast!
Therefore perhaps, thou art so early dead?
2nd Corpse.
They say that those thou lovedst were not men,
O goat-face—Shall I say what was thy death?
4th Corpse. ”

“ Necrosis of the tissues is likely to set in: the flesh corrupts, falls from the bone sometimes in tatters; and the colors of its putrefaction simulate the hues of vegetable decay,—the ghastly grays and pinks and yellows of trunks rotting down into the dark soil which gave them birth. The human victim moulders as the trees moulder,—crumbles and dissolves as crumbles the substance of the dead palms and balatas: the Death-of-the-Woods is upon him. ”

“ If we could but sever that cord which links us with the past and cut out the moral gangrene, as we amputate the physical limb when mortification has set in, how healthy would be our spiritual being, how cheerfully we could limp, mutilated but painless, to the grave! ”

“ He is next seized with violent delirium, and in his horrible paroxysms froths at the mouth, tears the flesh from his hands and arms, pulls his hair, and beats himself violently against the ground, meanwhile uttering the most piercing cries, till, completely exhausted, he remains without motion or feeling, and death ensues. ”

“ He exposes himself to be scorched by the sun and frozen by the frost. He lacerates his flesh; punctures his skin to receive sacred figures of the Gods. He mutilates his body, cutting off the most useful members. He sacrifices his cattle, his enemies, his children; defiles the sacred temple of his body; destroys his mortal life to serve his God. ”

“ They rubbed weak persons with the fat of a corpse, and thought that the strength, courage, and valour of the dead man was communicated to the body subjected to the treatment. Analogies may be found among savage tribes all over the world, and the culmination is found in the devouring of enemies, not out of revenge, but because the widespread primitive idea prevails that by eating the flesh and by drinking the blood of the slain, a man absorbs the nature or the life of the deceased into his own body. ”

“ Folds of flesh accumulated around the wrists, at the ankles, behind the knees, on the thighs, at the groins, on the lower abdomen.
Several times also I watched him while he slept. I looked at him for a long time, thinking and re-thinking of the means, made absent-minded by the inner vision of the little corpse in swaddling-clothes stretched in the coffin, amidst the wreaths of white chrysanthemums, between four lighted candles. He slept very peacefully; he lay on his back, his fist closed over his thumb. At times his moist lips made a movement as of sucking. ”

“ My victims ask me, with their cold hands about my throat and glassy eyes staring into mine, to name the hour I want to die. My flesh is bruised where they burn and prick me. My head is sore from the frequent pulling of my hair. ”

“ In some instances the legs are bent upward in such a fashion that they almost lie parallel with the trunk. The deceased could only be made to assume this position by a violent effort, and in many cases the tendons and the flesh had to be cut to facilitate the operation. The dryness of the ground selected for these burial-places retarded the corruption of the flesh for a long time, it is true, but only retarded it, and so did not prevent the soul from being finally destroyed. ”

“ Some were unrecognizable, charred masses of flesh that had been human before the subjects perished in a fire, while others were the gruesome countenances of cadavers whose faces were partially eaten away by cancer. ”

“ And we marvelled bitterly that man could adventure his frail organism through the deflagrations of a chemistry hardly disciplined as yet, which attains and surpasses the brutality of the blind forces of Nature. We marvelled more especially that flesh so delicate, the product and the producer of harmony, could endure such shocks and such dilapidations without instant disintegration.
Many men came to us with one or several limbs torn off completely, yet they came still living.... Some had thirty or forty wounds, and even more. ”

“ The usual mode of inflicting death was to hang the victim for a short time, just to benumb his or her faculties, then cut down and instantly rip open the belly, and tear out the heart, and hold it up, fling the bowels into the fire, then chop off the head, and cut the body into quarters, then boil the head and quarters, and then hang them up at the gates of cities, or other conspicuous places. ”

“ As, therefore, it is by death that He kills, it is by the resurrection that He will make alive. Now it is the flesh which is killed by death; the flesh, therefore, will be revived by the resurrection. Surely if killing means taking away life from the flesh, and its opposite, reviving, amounts to restoring life to the flesh, it must needs be that the flesh rise again, to which the life, which has been taken away by killing, has to be restored by vivification. ”

“ Some apply a tube about the barbs, so that when they draw out the weapon the flesh may not be torn by the barbs. If the wound does not become inflamed, we may use sutures, and heal it up like a bloody wound; but if it inflame we may remove the inflammation by embrocations, cataplasms, and the like. If the weapon be poisoned we must, if possible, cut off all the flesh which has imbibed the poison, which is known by its being altered from the sound flesh, for it appears pale, livid, and as it were dead. ”

“ In the flesh of animals killed whilst under the influence of any disease of an emaciating effect, the lyer adheres but slightly to the bones, with its fibres contracted and dry; and the little fat that there may be is friable, and shrunk within its integuments. The flesh of animals slaughtered whilst under considerable depression of vital energy (as from previous bleeding) has a diminished tendency to stiffen after death, the feebleness of this tendency being in proportion to the degree of depression. ”

“ I screamed, screamed in utter horror at the thing I saw there. Dead? Good God, I do not know. It was a corpse, a dead human body, standing before me like some propped-up thing from the grave. A face half eaten away, terrible in its leering grin. Twisted mouth, with only a suggestion of lips, curled back over broken teeth. Hair—writhing, distorted—like a mass of moving, bloody coils. ”

“ The reason for these remarkable restrictions imposed on men who have eaten human flesh is not stated; but we may surmise that fear of the ghost of the man whose body was eaten has at least a good deal to do with them. We are confirmed in our conjecture by observing that though these cannibals sometimes content themselves with taking bites out of living people, the rules in question are especially obligatory on them after they have devoured a corpse. Moreover, the careful treatment of the bones of the victim points to the same conclusion ”

“ Yet heaven-sent punishment overtakes him, commencing with his very flesh and going on to assail the life. For an incessant suppurative inflammation attacks him in the region of the private parts of the body; then later on a wound penetrating deep in like a fistula and an incurable eating sore affecting these inmost intestines. Then from these an indescribable number of worms bred, and a corpse-like smell was given off, the whole bulk of the bodily parts having through high living and under the influence of the disease changed into an exaggerated superfluity of fat. ”

“ That the flesh of those bodies was eaten there can be no doubt, for no savage would go to the trouble to mutilate the dead bodies of friend or foe, to the extent of separating all the joints with a knife, chopping the bones three or four inches long, and splitting all those and only those containing marrow, and then finally mixing them with the bones of the animals he undoubtedly used as food, and throwing them into one common heap. ”

“ How did He express those that are dead in the flesh? “They who are in the graves,” whose corpses lie buried, whose ashes are covered up, whose bones are dispersed, whose flesh is flesh no more, and yet is entire to God. ”

“ Its many bones, which never ached, and which have survived their painful sheaths of mortal flesh, all cool and clean, and rehung on golden threads, are not unpleasant to behold. But those faces in frames, eaten by cancer or lost in tumors, which you look up to as you enter, are horrible enough to haunt one forever (if you are not scientific) with the thought of what human flesh is heir to. ”

“ But what is supposed to strengthen them more than anything, both mentally and physically, is a small piece of the flesh of a dead person, or before a body is put in a bark coffin a few incisions were made in it ”

“ Scarifying and mutilating the body has prevailed from a remote period of time, having possibly replaced, in the process of evolution, to a certain extent, the more barbarous practice of absolute personal sacrifice. ”

“ Bleeding as a mutilation has an origin akin to the origins of other mutilations. Did we not find that some uncivilized tribes, as the Samoyeds, drink the warm blood of animals—did we not find among existing cannibals, such as the Feejeeans, proofs that savages drink the blood of still-living human victims—it would seem incredible that from taking the blood of a vanquished enemy was derived the ceremony of offering blood to a ghost, and to a god. ”

“ Gashings and tearings of the flesh make wounds which leave scars. If the blood-offerings which entail them are made by relatives to the departed spirit of an ordinary person, these scars are not likely to have any permanent significance; but, if they are made in propitiation of some deceased chief, not by his relatives alone, but by unrelated members of the tribe who stood in awe of him and fear his ghost, then like other mutilations they become signs of subjection. ”

“ It is said that a burn of two thirds of the surface destroys life, because then all the excretory matters which this portion of the glands of the skin evolved are thrown upon the blood, and poison the man, just as happens in an animal whose skin the physiologist has varnished, so as in this way to destroy its function. Yet here was I, having lost at least a third of my skin, and apparently none the worse for it. ”

“ Some have even a tolerable appetite; and the generality are cheered with adulatory hopes of recovery to the last extremity. The progressive encroachment{177} is evident, by increased debility, emaciation, and partial sweats; edematous ancles; diarrhœa; depilation; consumption and melting away of the fat and muscular flesh: at last sapless, and macerated into ghosts, the twinkling vital snuff is extinguished. It is, as yet, impossible for me to apportion the comparative mortality and recovery in real confirmed phthisis ”