|
4853
qualitative
book
Ogston A., Reminiscences of Three Campaigns, Hodder & Stoughton 1920, cited in Bown 2025
Reminiscences of Three Campaigns, Ogston Case, 1920
1943
1920
M
A. Ogston, a military surgeon, developed typhoid fever and was hospitalized in Bloemfontein in 1943. During his severe illness with high fever, he experienced a profound separation of mind and body. He described lying in a constant stupor where his mental and physical selves became dual and separate entities. He was conscious of his body as an inert mass near a door that belonged to him but was not him.
During his experience, his mental self would regularly leave the body and wander under grey, sunless skies toward a distant gleam on the horizon. He traveled through fields of asphodel beside a dark, slowly-flowing flood, feeling neither light nor darkness. Though death was hovering, he felt no religious dread, remaining apathetic and contented. He would be drawn back to his body with growing repulsion whenever something disturbed it, joining with it temporarily before wandering off again. As his condition worsened, these wanderings became more continual and distant. From his out-of-body state, Ogston developed a strange consciousness where he could see through the walls of the building. Everything appeared transparent to his senses. He witnessed a R.A.M.C. surgeon in another part of the hospital become very ill, scream, and die. He observed them cover the corpse and carry it out quietly on shoeless feet, then take it to the cemetery. He saw all these details despite being in a different part of the hospital. After recovering, when Ogston told the sisters about what he had witnessed, they confirmed that everything had happened exactly as he described. The death and removal of the surgeon had occurred precisely as he had seen it, though he never learned the deceased surgeon's name. Eventually, his wanderings became fewer and shorter as his body recovered, and the separation between his two entities ceased.
5
Hospital
5
12
25
Suggestive Evidence
8
Typhoid fever with high fever state, life-threatening condition
Witnessed death of surgeon in different part of hospital, confirmed by staff
written_account
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
7/31/2025
1
1
|