: Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented by Tebb William Vollum Edward Perry - Burial Premature

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INTRODUCTION.

It appears strange that, except when a man dies, all his concerns are protected by custom and formalities, or guarded by laws, so as to insure his interests being fairly carried out to completion. Thus we see that heirship, marriage, business affairs of all kinds, whether of a public or private nature, are amply guarded by such precautionary and authoritative measures as will secure them. But one of the most important of all human interests--that which relates to the termination of life--is managed in such a careless and perfunctory way as to permit of irreparable mistakes. To be sure there are laws in most of the Continental States of Europe that are intended to regulate the care and burial of the dead, but few of them make it certain that the apparently dead shall not be mistaken for the really dead, and treated as such. None of them allow more than seventy-two hours before burial , unless the attending physician petitions the authorities for reasonable delay--a rare occurrence. And even if postponement is granted, it is doubtful if the inevitable administrative formalities would leave opportunities for dubious cases to receive timely and necessary attention, or for cases of trance, catalepsy, coma, or the like, to be rescued from a living burial.

After reporting and describing a large number of cases of premature burial, or of narrow escapes from such terrible occurrences, in which the victims of hasty diagnosis were prepared for burial, or revived during the progress of the burial service, Mr. Cooper continues:--"Now, if a multiplicity of instances evince that many have the good fortune to escape being interred alive, it is justly to be suspected that a far greater number have fallen victims to a fatal confinement in their graves. But because human nature is such a slave to prejudice, and so tied down by the fetters of custom, it is highly difficult, if not absolutely impossible, to put people on their guard against such terrible accidents, or to persuade those vested with authority to take proper measures for preventing them."

Mr. Kite furnishes references to numerous cases of recovery where the apparently dead exhibited black, livid, or cadaverous countenances; eyes fixed or obscure; eyeballs diminished in size, immovable and fixed in their sockets, the cornea without lustre; eyes shrivelled; froth at the mouth; rigidity of the body, jaws, and extremities; partial or universal cold.

The crux of the whole question is the uncertainty of the signs which announce the cessation of physical existence. Prizes have been offered, and prizes have been awarded, but further experience has shown that the signs and tests, sometimes singly and sometimes in combination, have been untrustworthy, and that the only certain and unfailing sign of death is decomposition.

The subject has several times engaged the attention of the French Senate and Legislative Chamber, as well as the Legislative Assemblies in the various States of Germany. In 1871, Dr. Alex. Wilder, Prof. of Physiology and Psychological Science, read a paper before the members of both houses of the New York State Legislature at the Capitol, Albany; but we are not aware that the subject has ever been introduced in any of the other State Legislatures, or in the British Parliament, or in any of the Colonial Assemblies.

In order to prevent unnecessary pain to the reader on a subject so distressing in its nature, the more sensational and horrifying cases of premature burial have been omitted. They can, however, be found in abundance in the writings of Bruhier, K?ppen, Kempner, L?normand, Bouchut, Russell Fletcher, and the Boston edition of Hartmann. In England and in America it is the fashion amongst medical men to maintain that the tests known to medical art are fully equal to the prevention of live burial, that the cases quoted by the newspapers are introduced for sensational purposes, and that most of them are apocryphal. The perusal of the cases recorded in this volume, and a careful consideration of the weight of cumulative evidence represented by the very full bibliography, must satisfy the majority of reflective readers that the facts are both authentic and numerous.

PREMATURE BURIAL, AND HOW IT MAY BE PREVENTED.

TRANCE.

Dr. Herbert Mayo, in "Letters on Truths Contained in Popular Superstitions," p. 34, says that "death-trance is the suspension of the action of the heart, and of breathing, and of voluntary motion--generally little sense of feeling and intelligence. With these phenomena is joined loss of external warmth, so that the usual evidence of life is gone. But there has occurred every shade of this condition that can be imagined, between occasional slight manifestations of suspension of one or other of the vital actions and their entire disparition."

"The mental functions seem, in most cases, to be in complete abeyance. No manifestations of consciousness can be observed, or elicited by the most powerful cutaneous stimulation, and on recovery no recollection of the state is preserved. But in some cases volition only is lost, and the patient is aware of all that passes, although unable to give the slightest evidence of consciousness....

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