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ancient resuscitation 50 bce, sea of galilee Jacob ben C. hauled the small fishing boat onto the shore. The catch was good. As Jacob mentally estimated the weight and calculated the extra shekels he’d have for Sarah’s pendant, the headache struck like a hammer blow—a blast of searing white light, knife blades down the neck and into the back, and a tidal wave of nausea. Jacob had but a moment to reflect how different this was from the minor aches he had been feeling deep behind the eyes over the previous two days. His fellow fishermen saw his collapse play out in slow motion—first Jacob fell to his knees, and then he fell over backwards. Three of them rushed to help him, but Jacob did not respond to their shouts or vigorous shakes. When they looked into his face, they were surprised to see that one of his eyes was widely dilated. One of the fishermen ran to get Sarah. When she arrived, twenty minutes later, all she could do was hold Jacob and cry over and over, “God, God, why did you do this? Give him back! Give him back!” Death is invariably wrenching. But although death with an antecedent illness can seem inevitable, almost acceptable, sudden death—the transition from life to death in an instant—assaults our sense of the universe. Sudden death has always seemed incomprehensible. In biblical times, sudden death was not caused by heart disease—lifestyle factors and a short life expectancy made this a rare phenomenon. Instead, sudden death came 19 two A History of Resuscitation through accidents and catastrophic illnesses, such as the cerebral aneurysm suffered by Jacob in this fictional case history. But even though heart disease is of relatively recent origin, the desire to resuscitate is as old as recorded history itself. In biblical times, it was believed that only God or God’s agents could reverse death. That is why Sarah, Jacob’s wife, implores God to return her husband—only God and his agents were believed to have that power, as has been well described in the Bible. Even to attempt resuscitation without being an agent of God was to blaspheme God. In the first of the Hebrew Bible’s resuscitations, the prophet Elijah plays the leading role. A grief-stricken mother has brought her lifeless child to him (“And the son of the woman became ill; and his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him”). The woman begs Elijah for help. Elijah carries her son to his own bed and prays to the Lord. Then he stretches himself over the child three times: “And the Lord harkened to the voice of Elijah, and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived.” Elijah, with the assistance of God, brings the child back to life. The Bible gives an even more detailed account of another resuscitation, this one performed by the prophet Elisha, a disciple of Elijah. Elisha has befriended a Shunamite couple, and one day the couple’s child is found to be suffering from a severe 20 a history of resuscitation 2.1 Elisha Raising the Son of the Shunamite, by Lord Frederick Leighton (1830–1896). Oil on canvas, 1881. Courtesy Leighton House Museum, The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London/The Bridgeman Art Library. headache. The boy cries out, and then he collapses. Is this heatstroke? Is it an aneurysm, like the fictional Jacob’s? The Bible gives no further clues. The boy is carried to his mother, and he dies several hours later. The frantic mother then quickly rides to a neighboring village, where she finds Elisha, and together they return to the boy. Elisha enters the house and sees the boy laid out on his bed (figure 2.1). First he prays to the Lord. The Bible tells the rest of the story: [Elisha] placed himself over the child. He put his mouth on his mouth, his eyes on his eyes, and his hands on his hands, as he bent over him. And the body of the child became warm. He stepped down, walked once up and down the room, then mounted and bent over him. Thereupon, the boy sneezed seven times, and the boy opened his eyes. Some authorities speculate that Elisha’s weight must have compressed the child’s chest, and that the prophet’s beard tickled the child’s nose and caused the sneezing. (Perhaps this...

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