Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850
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e more luminous communication, in reply to B. H. at Vol. i., p. 315. My informant's "religio" (as she appears to have derived it by tradition from her mother, and as confirmed by her own experience in the case of a father, a {52} husband, several children, and others), is to the effect that a considerable interval invariably elapses between the first semblance of death, and what she considers to be the departure of the soul.
About five minutes after the time when death, to all outward appearance, has taken place, "the last breath," as she describes, may be seen to issue with a vapour, or "steam," out of the mouth of the departed.
The statement reminds me of Webster's argument, in his Display of supposed Witchcraft, chap. xvi., where, writing of the bleeding of corpses in presence of their murderers, he observes:
"If we physically consider the union of the soul with the body by the mediation of the spirit, then we cannot rationally conceive that the soul doth utt
