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  The most important contribution of the Society, though, was arguably its exhortation to leave no dead body unturned. “Since no body can affirm with certainty that the drowned be really dead, unless there be some signs of putrefaction on the body, we hope that till then all possible efforts may be made; and that those who know any other means of assistance will communicate them to us.”

  Admittedly, that admonition sets the bar pretty high. Unless a body is rotting, these guys suggest, it’s worth setting it in front of a fire, tickling it, and breathing into its orifices. Which is fine, I guess, if you happen to be that body. But it was probably a rough time to be a Good Samaritan.

  LATEAT SCINTILLULA FORSAN—“PERCHANCE A SPARK MAY BE CONCEALED”

  Around the same time that the Amsterdam Society was advancing the science of resuscitation, Londoners, too, were becoming increasingly concerned about their fellow citizens’ fatal encounters with various bodies of water in and around their fair city. One popular place for drownings and near-drownings was Hyde Park’s Serpentine, the long lake that slashes diagonally across the park. So in an effort to save some lives—and perhaps motivated by a friendly sense of competition with the Dutch—Londoners built a “receiving house” in 1794. Designed as a sort of emergency room and research laboratory, this structure was the stage for hundreds of miraculous resuscitations, and was the proving ground for new therapies.

  After a morning spent in the dusty London Public Library, I have in hand a copy of an article from the Illustrated London News that describes this building as “a neat structure, of fine brick fronted and finished with Bath and Portland stone.” So that’s what I’m looking for as I stroll through Temple Gate into the heart of Hyde Park. That “neat structure” has to be here somewhere.

  Although I have a description of the receiving house’s exterior, it’s what’s inside the building that is truly unique. According to the article, the Royal Humane Society—a knockoff of the Dutch society—spared no expense in building it. It has an entrance hall and separate wards for male and female patients. And, luxury of luxuries, the Illustrated London News boasts that this place has “beds warmed with hot water, a bath, and a hot-water, metal-topped table for heating flannels, bricks, &c.” One is left to imagine what the “&c” might be. It is, the article concludes with rather un-British immodesty, “a model for all other institutions of the same kind.” I can hardly wait.

  Just past the gate, there’s nothing in sight that looks like it might be what I’m looking for. But it’s a cloudless Sunday afternoon, and the weather is bringing the local inhabitants out in mobs for the first glimpse of sun in what perhaps has been years, judging from the rapt, pale faces that ghost past me.

  As I join the sunstruck Londoners, it’s easy to see why the Serpentine became a hot spot for the resuscitation movement. Created in 1730, this twenty-eight-acre body of water sits right in the center of London. That makes it an unavoidable water hazard for strollers, boaters, cyclists, and—in the winter—ice-skaters. In fact, shortly after its creation, Londoners flocked to the Serpentine to see and be seen and, with astonishing frequency, become apparently dead. That, it turned out, was the motivating force that catapulted the quiet science of resuscitation into the public view.

  The story of the Royal Humane Society begins in 1773 with a London physician, William Hawes, who became curious about the techniques used to bring the apparently dead back to life. At first, it seems that he hadn’t heard about the work of the Amsterdam Society. Whether he was entirely ignorant of the Dutch techniques is unclear, but when you’re dealing with a dead body, the list of plausible revivification maneuvers is rather short. So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Hawes entertained many of the same ideas that the Dutch had tried: mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, warming, and tobacco featured prominently in Hawes’s repertoire as well.

  But Hawes didn’t want to merely try these interventions. He was also curious. He wanted to figure out whether they worked.

  Hawes was so curious, in fact, that he wasn’t content to limit his experiments to the victims who happened to show up on his doorstep. So to supplement these meager and unpredictable offerings from the deep, he hit on the somewhat ghoulish expedient of paying anyone who would bring him a body rescued from the water “within a reasonable time of immersion.” Think of it as the human version of a deposit on bottles. (The Dutch did the same thing, but being of a practical mind and penurious disposition, they only paid for successful resuscitations.)

  History, alas, is silent on what constituted “a reasonable time.” One can imagine that the offer of payment might have induced more than a few cash-strapped entrepreneurs to stretch that definition just a bit. But Hawes got his bodies, and more than a few people earned a modest living. Someone might even have survived as a result of Hawes’s ministrations.

  A year later, in 1774, Hawes met up with Thomas Cogan, the physician who had translated the results of the Amsterdam Society’s work. What was probably a very morbid conversation ensued, and on April 18, 1774, the two each brought fifteen citizens—colleagues, church officials, merchants, and minor royalty—to the Chapter Coffee House in St. Paul’s Churchyard, where they founded what was to become the Royal Humane Society.

  The group had prestige, social standing, and money. It also had a great motto: “Lateat Scintillula Forsan.” In case your Latin is as rusty as mine is, this is often translated as “Perchance a Spark May Be Concealed.” The motto is supposedly carved over the entrance to the receiving house.

  Speaking of which, now I’ve passed the Ring Bridge and made my way along what is called the Long Water to the far northwest corner of the Serpentine. I’ve been dodging bladers, cyclists, and matrons pushing prams, without seeing a hint of the neat structure of the receiving house. Still, I tell myself, it’s a beautiful day. I keep walking.

  In Hawes and Cogan, the Society also had a pair of brilliant marketing strategists. First, they’d done their homework and had calculated that the previous year in London alone, 123 people were known to have drowned. If they could save even half, they said, or even one-tenth, that would be a spectacular victory. In appealing to the public for funding, the Society used this number freely, but it also made its appeal personal. For instance, it asked for support in restoring “a father to the fatherless, a husband to the widow, and a living child to the bosom of its mournful parents.” Not surprisingly, the money rolled in.

  What followed was, among other things, the development of an elaborate scheme that the Society concocted for bringing in bodies and for “receiving” a body in a tavern, which would become a theater for resuscitation. It was a living for a few and a scam for many. The going rate for what the Society paid out, by the way, was two guineas (about $250 in today’s money) to a bystander who attempted resuscitation, four guineas when that attempt was successful, and one guinea to an innkeeper who offered up his establishment for a resuscitation party.

  Eventually, the Society stopped paying for dead bodies dumped on its doorstep. History is not forthcoming about when, exactly, this payment system ended. Nor is there a clear explanation of why, although one can imagine.

  Instead, the Society began to spend its charitable contributions on innovation and on the testing of new “scientific” forms of resuscitation. For instance, it invested in a bewildering variety of new bellows for inflating the lungs. It also seemed to be particularly enthusiastic about the potential benefits of various heated beds and chairs that could be used to warm bodies quickly. But the pinnacle of its investment was the “receiving house.”

  It was built not merely to save the lives of unlucky bathers in the Serpentine, but also to ensure that new methods of resuscitation could be tested under controlled circumstances (unlike the circumstances found in inns and taverns).

  The Society’s seventieth annual report published in 1844 boasts that a wide range of promising techniques received “a fair trial at the Receiving-House in t
he Park.” Only the most efficacious, it claimed, were selected. Of these, some of the strongest recommendations are reserved for warming the body, and the application of friction with “rough cloth or flannel.” The use of bellows with a volume of approximately 40 cubic inches is also recommended, but only by “Medical Men, who may all be fairly presumed to be perfectly conversant with the modes of carrying on artificial respiration.”

  I’m not so sure this was a fair assumption to make, but the language of science is truly impressive. And reassuring. The early nineteenth century, it seems, was an excellent time to drown.

  In fact, reading the Society’s annual reports that describe the results of these experiments gives a remarkable sense of scientific advancement and rapid discovery. For instance, its seventieth annual report (1844) describes a new revelation in the science of artificial breathing. “For some time,” it says, “the practice has prevailed of inflating the lungs by means of a curved tube passed through the mouth into the trachea.”

  Of course, you think. Who would dream of inflating the lungs in any other way? Well, you’re in for a surprise.

  “It is now deemed more advisable,” the report proposes delicately, “to introduce the air through a short ivory pipe inserted into one of the nostrils, pressing back the lower part of the larynx upon the commencement of the oesophagus, to prevent the air from passing down into the stomach.” Who would have thought? That section of the report concludes matter-of-factly: “The metallic trachea tube is, therefore, discontinued, and the instrument-case is furnished with ivory nostril pipes.”

  So there you have it. No more curved tubes. We’ll all use ivory nostril pipes.

  And there’s some solid reasoning to support this. Even now, when inserting a breathing tube is difficult (for example, in a patient who is overweight), a nasal tube is often much easier. It’s also a more reliable technique when the person trying to inflate a victim’s lungs is inexperienced, as most doctors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries no doubt were.

  However, the Society produced other recommendations that didn’t make much sense. For instance, an early pamphlet tells would-be rescuers: “Grasp the patient’s arms just above the elbows, and draw the arms gently and steadily upwards, until they meet above the head.” This, the pamphlet explains helpfully, “is for the purpose of drawing air into the lungs.” Next, the pamphlet tells rescuers to “turn down the patient’s arms, and press them gently and firmly for two seconds against the sides of the chest. (This is with the object of pressing air out of the lungs.)” Finally, just in case you’re tempted to walk away, the pamphlet reminds you that you’re not done yet: “Repeat these measures alternately, deliberately, and perseveringly, fifteen times in a minute.” Although I’m certain that these maneuvers put on quite a show for bystanders, I regret to report that they probably did no good whatsoever.

  In fact, while it was most active during the nineteenth century, the receiving house was host to trials of dozens of resuscitation techniques, many of which were no more effective than flapping a person’s arms. (Rescuers continued to protect bathers and skaters well into the twentieth century. Victims were hung upside down, for instance, and rolled over barrels. The Amsterdam Society’s reservations about this latter approach apparently didn’t dissuade the British from trying it, although they, too, would abandon it eventually.) Other strategies involved being thrown over the back of a horse and trotted at a brisk pace and, of course, tickling the back of the throat with a feather.

  The use of these techniques may make it seem like the work of the receiving house was little more than charlatanism, but thanks to the Society’s meticulous record-keeping we know that it was able to demonstrate remarkable successes by the end of the nineteenth century. For instance, in 1884, of 270,000 bathers in the peak bathing months of June and July, there were thirty-one rescues. Of these, fifteen were taken to the receiving house, where they were successfully brought back to life from apparent death. Even today, those statistics would be impressive.

  All of these advances took place in the receiving house that I seem to be unable to locate. So finally, I decide to ask for directions. I pick my target carefully—an older man in his seventies dressed in gray flannel from head to toe. He’s sitting on a secluded bench with a commanding view of the bridge and the length of the Long Water, and he’s resting a thin, fine-veined hand on a polished mahogany cane. I’m thinking that he doesn’t look too busy.

  He considers my question for just a second, and then his eyes light up under overgrown eyebrows. He nods.

  “That was brilliant, that was. They were always rescuing someone. Racing around, pulling people out of the Serpentine and bringing them back to life.”

  I ask if he actually saw them. Was he there?

  “I certainly was.” He nods. “My father would bring us here when we were lads, back in the ’30s. We learned how to swim just over there.” He gestures to his right, along the southern bank, where the Lido stands now. In the eighteenth century, that had been exactly where the park ranger, the Duke of Cambridge, decreed that swimming should take place. The bottom there had a gentler slope, he argued. And by corralling bathers into a small area, he suggested, the lifeguards would be able to watch them more closely for signs of trouble.

  “Those were the days.”

  I ask him if he ever saw anyone drown, but no sooner have the words left my mouth than I realize that this sort of question suggests a certain morbid fascination, and thus is perhaps not the best one with which to pursue a conversation with a perfect stranger. But the gentleman in flannel seems unruffled, and even a little excited.

  “Oh my, yes. All the time. That was half the fun of coming here. You’d always be keeping an eye out for someone who might be in trouble. Then the lifeguards would come rushing in. Or the ice men, in the winter. They’d pull the gent right out. Other times, they’d lay him over the back of a horse and trot him up to the house.”

  Ah. The house. That could only be the receiving house. At last.

  I feel like an explorer who finds the last survivor who can point the way to a forgotten Mayan temple. Here was someone who had actually witnessed these events. And someone who, apparently, was as titillated by them as I was. Even better, someone who knew about the receiving house.

  But first, I have to ask whether he ever saw them revive anyone . . . with a feather?

  The man looks at me blankly for a second, but then his face breaks into a grin revealing two rows of perfectly immortal dentures. “Well, no, I can’t say that I did. But I heard about a whole list of other things.” He pauses, lost in a reverie. “Let’s see. There was the trotting on a horse, as I said. That was great fun. Helped get water out of the lungs, or some such. And there were bellows—all manner of bellows that were supposed to breathe for you. And then, sometimes I heard that they’d roll people over a barrel—back and forth.” He slides one elegant hand back and forth over the crook of his cane to demonstrate, then shakes his head. “I’m not sure any of that worked, but it was quite a spectacle.”

  “And the receiving house? Where they took people? Is it close by?”

  He shakes his head. “Oh, no, that came down years ago. In the 1950s, I’d say. Maybe earlier. No need for it, you see. There were fire trucks and ambulances. So they tore it down. Pity.” (Actually, I learned later from an authoritative source that it was destroyed in the London Blitz in 1940.)

  Pity indeed. Well, so much for that. But at least I’ve been rewarded with a brush with history, and a pleasant walk. I thank the gentleman and thread my way northward and out of the park.

  Wandering out of the relative quiet of Hyde Park and onto the streets of London, I’m thinking about all the techniques that were tried in the receiving house. And those stories were making me curious. Could tobacco smoke in the right place really revive someone? And what about being hung upside down?

  Intriguing. But a little scary. And that�
�s a problem, because I’m beginning to get the idea that I should try one of these techniques myself.

  If that sounds like an odd way to spend a morning, I suppose it is. But these stories of resuscitation seem so distant—and many of them so bizarre—that I want to take a firsthand look at how they work. And I really want to understand why anybody thought that they might work at all.

  I mentally review the list of the receiving house’s recommended treatments, looking for something that isn’t illegal, stupid, or downright dangerous. Nope. Nothing.

  So then I go back over the list looking for something that at least won’t kill me, and that isn’t likely to be too uncomfortable. Now, that’s a little better. By the time I pass through Speakers’ Corner and down into the Underground, I have it whittled down to two possibilities.

  I could suffer a near-drowning accident and then have someone waiting nearby who is ready to tickle the back of my throat with a feather. That might be fun. I have fleeting visions of being carried from the surf by a naked Amazon, who would whip out a feather—from somewhere—and . . .

  But some fantasies are best left on the shelf. Besides, there’s the whole “near-drowning” thing. That doesn’t sound very appealing. Next.

  I could fling myself across a horse’s back to see if that’s a reasonable substitute for breathing. That doesn’t take much deliberation. A mild morning on horseback seems like the easy way out.