Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1874 — An Exciting Race — The Story of a Grave Robbery. [ARTICLE]

An Exciting Race — The Story of a Grave Robbery.

1 In a town of Northern New York a poor man went to his grave by a disease of the brain, concerning which the local medical authorities differed widely and acrimoniously. In fact two particular physicians, who had long been professional rivals, eo radically'disagreed as to the exact character of the case that, when he whose treatment prevailed could not save the patient, the other did not hesitate to allege that the sick man had been deby ignorant mismanagement. When a respectable practitioner casts such an imputation upon a member of his own professional school, he should •be prettv confident of his ability to prove it, and the accuser in the present instance was not unaware of his imperative obligation substantiate his accusation. But how was ta d , onfc? He had firmly maintained that J’ e caused by a turn...' removal of the same bv an ope.. , B f ve the patient’s fife. His . nsi ® M?* l there was no tumor, and conseqnv. uU Y dld not perform the operation. Now, nuTV was it to be practically demonstrated that the tumor did exist if the patient was in his grave ? There was but eue way of do- - ing that, and the doctor adopted it. On Christmas Eve, near m'Maight, when lights shone brightly from houses far and at hand, and the snow lay crisp?? on the ground, the professional disputant, whose truth and standing were at stake, as he considered, in the matter, took a confidential Student of his with him' in the sleigh to the graveyard, where had been placed the hapless subject of’dispute, and rapidly and silently disinterred the poor body and placed it in the vehicle. The whip was given to the horse, and away started the sleigh on the snowy road to the surgery’. But scarely had the desecrators of man’s last resting-place got under way with their ghastly prize when the muffled beat Of horse’s hoofs somewhere p B Uie. darkness behind them told that they had been watched and were being pursued. Sharper fell The whip, and the spirited young animal before the sleigh went like the wind! yet still the pursuing hoofbeats sounded through the keen air, showing that the pursuer was well mounted. Turning from the main road Into a by-way. or short-cut, leading through a swampy piece of woods, the fugitives managed to gain enough distance to stop the sleigh a moment just at the edge of a plank bridge, over a frozen woodland stream, ana stretch a rope across the dark and narrow road. This done, they were off again for the surgery close at hand, Jwith the gallop of the pursuer coming sharply again to their ears. Pausing once again beyond the bridge to bear presently the collision of the coming horseman with the unseen rope, a crash, a cry of wrath, the two men carried the body to the house and triumphantly deposited it oh the dissecting table. Then, thinking of nothing but his own discredited diagnosis of the disease and the glory it would be to prove it trne, the daring practitioner set to work with bis Instrument*. Carefully shaving one side of (he head and entting through the soalp over the spot where the principal

pain had been,lie bored with his trephine through the skull until a circular button of hone, about as large as a copper cent, was removed, and, behold, there was, indeed, the tumor! But the strangest scene of the enrious drama was yet to come, and may be best described iii the' doctor’s own words: "With no small degree of self-satisfaction I threw down my instruments and was going down stairs when I heard a faint sigh. As I kneeled by the dead man’s side and, candle in hand, gazed anxiously into his pallid features, he feebly gasped and raised his eyelids. My God! Could it be reality? Eagerly the slender thread of life was seized upon, and hour by hour, day by day, week by week, it was strengthened into a cable •of perfect health.’’ In other words, the supposed dead man, whose disinterment had occurred but a few hours after burial, had been only insensible instead of dead, and the removal of the tumorous pressure on his brain was just in time to save his life. And another strange discovery was that on the same Christmas night the doctor who had denied the tumor had broken his arm by falling from his horse! Suspecting what his rival intended, he, too. had ridden secretly to the graveyard, ana was the pursuing horseman whom the con-' cealed rope across the road so signally overthrew.— N. Y. Express.