Coming back from the dead sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but it happened to a 23-year-old U.K. man: His pulse began again half an hour after doctors pronounced him dead. Sadly, his heart stopped beating permanently two days later, and a coroner declared death due to natural causes.
It’s not the first time someone has literally come back to life—but, with only 38 cases reported worldwide, it’s pretty rare. The condition is called Lazarus Syndrome, an allusion to the Biblical story in which Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and it occurs when a person’s circulation spontaneously returns after resuscitation attempts fail.
In the past, the syndrome has triggered fears of being buried, or even autopsied, while still alive. It’s a pretty creepy thought… one that we’ll try not to consider ever again.
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Image: flickr / ernstl
June 11th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
So, his vital signs just came back on instantly?
Good thing he wasn’t burried! Waking up inside a coffin can be very spooky and you’d only last less than 1 hour!
June 11th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
The article doesn’t indicate if the man was responsive to others in anyway during the two days after he spontaneously revivified. It would be incredible if he was still coherent enough to have a conversation. But I’m betting he was essentially in a vegetative state for those two days, and not capable of any conscientious awareness after his heart stopped the first time.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
If his heart stopped then there was no blood being pumped to his brain. Lack of oxygen for even a few minutes leads to irreversible brain damage so I can imagine what half an hour would do. It’s a miracle that he woke up at all.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
pulse of heart onely? or heart and brain?
June 16th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Waking up in a coffin would be scary…. didnt they used to have things for that though, so if you were buried alive you could ring a bell in your coffin and people would come back to get you? People were crazy in the past…
June 16th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
To answer AriesMan, the bell wasn’t in the coffin, it was above-ground.
A pipe with a cord ran from the coffin to the bell, the idea being that if the corpse…umm, person…woke up, he/she could pull the cord and ring the bell. Someone was posted at the bell to wait for it to ring and raise an alarm so that the person could be dug up.
The bell observer that watched at night was said to be “taking the midnight shift”, hence the origin of our term for the work shift that begins around 12 midnight.
June 16th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Close – it was called the graveyard shift.
June 16th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
To Aries Man:
“People were crazy in the past….” And they aren’t now?
July 29th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
[...] Discover. Tags: [...]
August 10th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
[...] Syndrome was in the news a few months ago when a 23-year-old man was pronounced dead, only to have his heart start beating again a half hour later. While that story had a tragic end (the man eventually died) now there’s [...]
August 12th, 2009 at 9:52 am
[...] and typically after resuscitation, the victim wakes up. A more recent known case of this was a 23-year-old man in the United Kingdom. Shortly after he woke, he died. Again. This is the equivalent of [...]