Cole wrote that in a family consisting of six sisters, five died in quick succession of galloping consumption. "The old superstition in such cases is that the vital organs of the dead still retain a certain flicker of vitality and by some strange process absorb the vital forces of the living." To back up their belief, residents told of "instances wherein exhumation has revealed a heart and lungs still fresh and living, encased in rottening and slimy integuments, and in which, after burning these portions of the defunct, a living relative, else doomed and hastening to the grave, has suddenly and miraculously recovered." To be effective, they asserted, the ceremony must be conducted at night by a single individual at the open grave.    

Text © Dr. Michael Bell