Paging Dr. Icard

Lowell Citizen and Daily News, July 28, 1858. Dunno who this Magee character was but will attempt to find out. I wouldn’t bet the rent on the truth value of this anecdote, but it’s a fine story.

Penultimate death test

Washington Post, April 9, 1907. Okay, it seems like I was maybe jumping to conclusions about the sinister vampiric agenda of Dr. Icard. Detection of suspended animation and prevention of premature burial seem to have been sincere and lifelong obsessions chez lui. One wonders why, if this test worked so perfectly, he had to go and develop his second method.

Absolute death test

The New York Times, September 14, 1914. Lemme get this straight: Upon the injection of this Lovecraftian substance into a freshly dead person, his or her eyes turn into “superb emeralds, set like jewels in their sockets,” and then it turns out no funeral is necessary after all. Could this “Icard” (transparent anagram for “I, Drac”) be any more brazen in his campaign to take over Marseilles with his private army of the undead?

Still, it would all make a great ad for the glossies. You’ve got this Lionel Atwill-type in a white lab coat brandishing a big hypodermic, see? He’s shooting the goo into the pallid arm of a young lovely whose charms are barely covered by her winding sheet. Her wide-open eyes are superb green emeralds, and nicely set off by the stainless steel mortuary table upon which she reposes, whose outline is isometric to the fireplug shape of the bottle containing your client’s naphtha-like beverage.

Evasion of the body snatchers

Chicago Tribune, April 23, 1899. For a while there I was considering having my earthly remains hung up to season in a smokehouse, but now I’m think I’m leaning toward this anti-cryogenic scheme proposed by the ingenious Mr. George R. Seamans. I’m not 100% how it improves upon cremation as a means of dodging the dissection table and its attendant indignities, but it surely serves as a hedge against premature burial.