The Mysterious Fluid

by Paul Vibert

  For many years, with Durand-Claye and Francisque Sarcey,66 I conducted a vigorous campaign in favor of mains drainage, and, after many obstacles, I finally have the pleasure of saying that we succeeded, overcoming all the difficulties. Since then, the admirable final stage of the main drainage system has been inaugurated—if there were a d at the end of finaux it would render my thought entirely apt67—by the five kilometer tunnel that passes under the mountain of Auteuil, between Poissy, Meulan and Pontoise, a marvel of modern subterranean construction.

  On the same subject, more than a year ago, I said:

  “The General Council of Seine-et-Oise is actively concerned, and rightly so, with conditions of hygiene in the département. Well-informed people also add that this year, several localized epidemics of measles, smallpox and typhoid fever have recently proved the desirability and the necessity of taking energetic measures to combat these contagious diseases.

  “To this deplorable state of affairs there is but one sole remedy: main drainage, with sewage farms, in order not to poison the Seine. Physicians know this; the engineers are ready to go, but the Syndicate of Parisian Landowners does not want to transform the installations, and is supported and encouraged by the cesspool-emptiers. One has the shameful and lamentable spectacle of seeing a great city like Paris and two départements subjected, mercilessly and without defense, to the invasion of all kinds of epidemics, because a handful of fat capitalist cesspool-emptiers don’t want mains drainage. Once again, it is shameful, and dangerous for the Seine and for Seine-et-Oise. I don’t care whether the cesspool-emptiers lose their money, but only that we become healthy, like all the capitals of Europe, by means of the broad, entire, absolute and immediate application of mains drainage, leading to sewage-farms. That is the only means of purifying the Seine and avoiding epidemics. There lies salvation; there should be no hesitation, and it’s necessary to break the self-interested resistance of the dishonest cesspool-emptiers without delay.”

  By a cruel and fatal coincidence, I had scarcely finished writing those lines when I was proved only too correct; in a fit of madness, a formidable explosion of the deleterious gases in a drainage-ditch at 127 Rue de l’Université blew up the stone cover of the ditch, which was in the courtyard. The concierge, an old man of sixty, and his grand-daughter Marcelle were on top of it at the time; both precipitated to a depth of four meters, they were immediately killed and asphyxiated by the brutal fall and the noxious gases—a death as atrocious as it was unexpected!

  Fortunately, mains drainage will prevent all such catastrophes, and I am proud to have made a significant contribution to it.

  In this subject area, I could multiply to infinity examples of extraordinary deaths by explosion. Not long ago, workmen were sitting quietly eating their lunch on a gas-pipe in a railway station; the sun and the contact of all those warm bodies caused the gas to expand, and there as a sudden terrible explosion. One of the workmen was thrown into the air, uttering one last cry of anguish and agony. He fell back, and was hurriedly lifted up; he was dead. Seated directly over a plug, it had pierced his body from below and emerged from within like a machine-gun bullet.

  Now, here we are in a telegraph office with pneumatic apparatus; in Paris, dispatches are being sent in little metal boxes through subterranean tubes with a thunderous force of several atmospheres, to arrive with a dull thud at the destination office.

  An employee is standing in the foreground; he has forgotten to close the receptive apparatus; the dispatch arrives and bang!, with one bound the little box is in the unfortunate man’s belly, perforates it, knocks him over and goes right through him. He has died without even saying oof!

  Would you care to look at this magic lantern? It’s beautiful, but the operator has a canister of gas next to him, compressed to several atmospheres. Bang! It explodes, and before the terrified audience, there goes the magic lantern into the air, along with the operator—killed instantly—in bloody shreds.

  We’re in the Bois de Boulogne at dusk; amorous couples are circulating on bicycles. Here’s a ravishing girl in a figure-hugging costume, steering her bicycle with the aid of its acetylene lamp, as bright as a star; it’s Venus illuminating the other Venus that it’s guiding. But look out—bang! The lamp explodes and the poor little thing, not quite dead, is lying on her side, her head bloody, leaning sadly on a broken wheel.

  But to judge by that account, you say, one might blow up at any time! But of course—certainly!

  I knew two good bourgeois in the Marais who never set foot on a railway train for fear of being blow up, but one had a soda-water machine enclosed in a finely-woven rush basket, in order to make his own soda-water at the table, and the other had a well-known apparatus with two receptacles for making coffee, also at the table. Well, both of them were blown up, along with their apparatus, although neither died.

  “I beg your pardon, but do people often get blown up at the Bourse?”

  “Yes, and at the Bullier68 too, but they don’t always die. That’s why I shan’t talk about them today.

  How People Die in America

  I. The death-penalty in the United States.

  A great murderous people.

  Twice executed alive. A long martyrdom. Horrible details.

  My political friends in the United States and Canada—the Fenians, the knights of labor, black people and the socialists…true socialists—are sometimes generous enough to remember that I’ve had a fair amount to do with electricity in my time, and that I’ve always defended the negroes; and that’s why, from time to time, they send me documents of the greatest interest.

  They often enclose revelations that I can’t set before the eyes of my readers, for fear of compromising the sacred cause of human emancipation, but today69 I received from one of these kind folk a letter so curious that I couldn’t resist the temptation to publish it.

  Moreover, my own information and personal enquiries permit me to affirm that it constitutes nothing but an expression of the exact truth. I shall pass over the customary compliments and get to the essential part:

  “Perhaps I shall find in you, my dear sir, who are one of the staunchest defenders of the claims of socialists and black people in America, a man courageous enough to expose the facts that I shall relate to you—in fact, I have no doubt about it.

  “I am not a black man, but a man of color, of mixed race, born in the United States. For ten years I have been a schoolteacher in a large town not far from New York. Married with children, I have spent my life very quietly, between my duties as a teacher and my family duties, with no other ambition.

  “One day, a twelve-year-old child who was in my class suddenly disappeared.

  “As I was known to have advanced socialist opinions, was reputed to be affiliated to secret societies, and had the misfortune—unpardonable here, in the land of liberty—to be colored, I was soon accused of having murdered the child. The population wanted to lynch me; saved by the police, I was tried and condemned to death—without any evidence, since I’m innocent.

  “When the sentence was pronounced I heard a terrible scream in the hall, followed by a forceful exclamation: ‘I’ll save you!’ It was my valiant wife, a pure-blooded black woman, who was being thrown out by the police.

  “Alas! That condemnation to death was nothing, merely the commencement of my long martyrdom, for I was, like all those condemned to death in the United States nowadays, to be executed and martyrized alive twice over, and it’s truly miraculous that I have come back from it.

  “Taken back to my cell after the condemnation, I was informed, a few days later, that I was to be executed, in accordance with the new fashion, by electricity.

  “I would much rather have been hanged, for my studies had led me to the invincible conclusion that one must take a long time to die, if one dies at all—and the horrors of the dissection-theater, with regard to a body paralyzed but alive, made me shiver in advance.

  “One morning, therefore, I was led to the execution-chambe
r, installed in and attached to the electric chair with the metal helmet on my head. You know what it’s like—illustration has popularized that savage form of execution; you know, so I shall skip the details.

  “The current was switched on. After violent convulsions, I remained inert in the chair. I was dead—at least the torturer-physicians said so. But no, I was alive, fully alive, but in a state of anesthetic insensibility, and I could hear perfectly what the physicians around me were saying. I even heard it with the acuity of perception that arsenic poisoning, for instance, produces. Except that I couldn’t move.

  “Having examined me thoroughly, the physicians had me detached by their assistants, and one of them said: ‘Take the body to the theater; we’re going to dissect it.’

  “And another hastened to add: ‘That’s the most prudent thing to do, for experience has already demonstrated that an autopsy is a necessary complement to electrocution; without that, one never knows whether these scoundrels (sic) are good and dead!’

  “You can imagine, my dear sir, that all this caused a sentiment of indescribable terror to grow within me. I had always been brave, but this time, it must be said, the awareness of my impotence in the face of the investigative scalpel froze the blood in my veins.

  “A few moments later, stripped of my clothing, I was laid on a large slab, surrounded by the traditional little gutters, and a bucket on legs to receive my blood and entrails. Although my eyes were closed, I was able to take an exact account of my situation; I knew exactly where I was, and I confess that I had never experienced such anguish in my life.

  “The physicians conferred; first they would examine the nervous system of the arms. I felt cold steel digging into my flesh, and they butchered me alive in that fashion for some time. I screamed desperately—but internally, alas; they heard nothing. It was perhaps as well, all things considered, for otherwise, they would have finished me off immediately!

  “Finally, I lost consciousness—or, rather, my mental self lost perception of things under the intensity of the pain.

  “When I came round—after how long, I don’t know—I heard that the physicians had finished examining the nerves of my poor arm. ‘Let’s examine the arteries now.’

  “‘No, that’s unnecessary,’ said another—and I experienced a surge of joy, for I felt that once the arteries were cut, that would be death. So strongly does one hold on to life, even when one is officially dead. It’s crazy and stupid, Monsieur, what I tell you there, but I have suffered so much!

  “The one who seemed to be in charge of the company of official executioners and reputable scientists went on: ‘We’ll open his kidneys, but let’s start with the abdomen.’

  “You’re not unaware that in the United States, although we have good dentists and passable veterinary surgeons, the physicians are all ignorant, and, apart from kidneys, no knowing of their art.

  “I felt the chill of the scalpel again, passing over my abdomen, and I said to myself: ‘This time, it’s finished,’ while enveloping my wife and children with an immense hug. It’s extraordinary how rapidly thought moves at such moments, condensing ideas into a flash of time.

  “By virtue of a singular phenomenon, however, I suddenly felt the steel, instead of penetrating my skin, escape from the operator’s hands, and I heard all the physicians utter a cry of amazement: ‘He’s white!’

  “Later, I understood the meaning of that exclamation. It was just that, under the intensity of the mental and physical tortures I had just endured, my hair and beard had suddenly turned white.

  “Then there was a great hubbub in the theater. Through the partly-open door, I heard my wife’s voice, who was claiming my cadaver insistently, and a good deal of movement outside. The excitement was in a neighboring building.

  “At this unexpected turn of events, the physicians all abandoned me and one of them said to my wife in a brutal tone: “Take this carrion and scram—leave us in peace.’

  “With one bound, like a panther, my wife lifted me on to her shoulders and threw me into a carriage outside, where my children were.

  “Ten minutes later, not in my own home but that of steadfast friends, my wife deposited me on a bed, bandaged the wounds on my arm, put a dressing on my abdomen—which was only scratched—and blew forcefully into my mouth. Only a few minutes had gone by when, thanks to that artificial respiration, I opened my eyes again. I had come back to life—truly. I was saved.

  “We made haste to flee the country; I’m sending you this letter from South America, and I have a strong desire to go to Africa, into the midst of black people, my ancestors—for I think those worthy people are a little less cruel than white men.

  “It is therefore quite certain, and I affirm strongly, that all those condemned to death in the United States are executed twice over, alive—once by the electricity and second time by the autopsy. That is the only means of obtaining a true cadaver, our physician torturers say.

  Great scientists in your country, like Messieurs d’Arsonval, François Biraud and Lacassagne,70 have already recognized that there is something inhuman in that double martyrdom of a poor creature, alive an helpless.

  “Monsieur d’Arsonval has declared that there is only an apparent death after electrocution, and that the stricken individual can be recalled to life by the same procedures that are applied to a person fallen into water.

  “And what is horrible is that the physicians of the United States know this full well, and that it is to occasion death that they proceed to the autopsy and butcher living people!

  “That’s more than enough, my dear Monsieur. I’m safe and I’m very happy, as are all my family—only, make these horrors of American pseudoscience known in Europe; perhaps you will be able to stop many murders, as monstrous as they are juridical, and will usefully serve the cause of humanity!”

  I have nothing to add to this long epistle, except that these horrible scenes are repeated every day in the United States, at each new execution, and that it is perhaps time that the Americans brought a little more humanity and circumspection into their method of killing criminals.

  It is infamous, and it must be said that if it were to cease, it would only be to the honor of the human race to which we belong.

  II. Body-snatchers in the United States. Various syndicates.

  Necropolis-burglars. Macabre details. Most horrible!

  It is very evident that the Anglo-Saxon peoples are infinitely more practical than those of the Latin races, and for a long time they have been able, very pragmatically, to find a capital to exploit in the dead as well as in the living. Everyone remembers the story of the English exploiting Egyptian mummies on a massive scale, making fertilizer out of them after selling the bandages at a good price for various purposes.

  Well, for some years, a gang of burglars in the United States—a perfectly-organized syndicate, a formidable Trust, as they call it over there—has been constituted for stealing from cemeteries the princes of finance, railways, wheat or used fat, billionaires or merely millionaires a few hundred times over.

  When a Gould, a Mackay, a World, a Rockefeller a Carnegie or one of his family members dies, the syndicate of necropolis-burglars, which has usually bribed the wardens in advance, takes possession of the cadaver, puts it in a safe and secret place, and has it published in the newspapers that it is at the disposal of the family, in exchange for one or two million dollars—five or six million francs—according to the fortune and grief of the people who have to be made to pay up.

  It cannot be said that these thieves are often arrested by the police; they take all possible precautions and are able avenge themselves on the dead or the living if one lays a hand on them.

  A superb discovery was made, however which drew admiration from Parisians among the great works of the Exposition, along the railway circling Paris, etc. I mean reinforced concrete—and, immediately, with the eye-blink promptitude that distinguishes them, the architects and entrepreneurs of Yankee buildings formed a second syndicate
for digging profound ditches and filling them with reinforced concrete, along with a coffin placed in the center. The whole thing is covered by a wall or a beam, as you please, of reinforced concrete several meters thick, with the result that the billionaires of the United States, having their tombs constructed in advance before their very eyed, said to themselves: ‘This time, the burglars are sunk and we can rest in peace in our ultimate sleep.

  It did no good, for chemists and diamond-cutters immediately formed a third syndicate, immediately known throughout the United States as the syndicate of perforators, who, by cleverly combining explosive powders and diamond-tipped steel drill-bits, did indeed succeed in perforating reinforced concrete tombs and stealing coffins triple-clad in lead, oak, jacaranda and other precious woods.

  Then the situation became critical, and there was an instant of stupor throughout the starry Republic, before this Homeric duel of billionaires defending their dead skin and necropolis-burglars.

  Truly, no one knew any longer what measures to take to escape the rapacity of these people, when a temporary solution—you will soon see why I say temporary—was finally furnished by a conference of legal experts, journalists and undertakers convened for that purpose. They found, very judiciously and conclusively, that burglars did not want these unfortunate cadavers, and that it was simply a matter of reaching an understanding with them regarding the tax that one needed to pay them, at every burial of an important person known for his large fortune. That is somewhat reminiscent of the customs of Greek brigands, great lords of the mountains, to whom it was necessary to pay for an escort in order not to be robbed—but the idea seemed excellent. It was put into practice and for some time, it was thought that the issue had been resolved.