Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented

by William Tebb; Edward Perry Vollum

VERIFICATION OF DEATHS.

“In Paris and the large French towns medical inspectors, called médecins verificateurs, are appointed, whose business it is to visit each house where a death occurs, and ascertain that the person is really dead, and that there are no suspicious circumstances connected with his or her decease. More than eighty qualified medical men are employed for this purpose in Paris.

“In the rural districts of France this system is not in force; two witnesses making a declaration to a civil officer that a death has taken place, is considered sufficient. The burial is not allowed to take place until at least twenty-four hours after the declaration.”—Blyth: Dictionary of Hygiene and Public Health.

Dr. Léonce Lénormand, in his admirable work “Des Inhumations Précipitées,” p. 140, accuses the médecins des morts in France with culpable carelessness in the exercise of their function, which consists in verifying the reality of the death. Instead of making a minute examination of the body to ascertain the fact of death, this writer says they are content (except in cases of death from violence) to merely glance at the body, and immediately to hand the family the necessary authorisation for interment.VERIFICATIONS ILLUSORY. The inspector knows that if he examined every part of the body, as in duty bound, he would be accused of barbarism and profanation. Those, therefore, who think that premature burial could be prevented in England by means only of a more stringent law of compulsory death-certification, would, if it were carried, find themselves in hardly any better position than at present, where the fact of death is left to a great extent to the judgment of friends, if the deceased has any, or to the perfunctory inspection of the undertaker. It is in France where probably, in spite of médecins verificateurs, more premature burials occur than in any country in Europe except Turkey, immediate burial after real or apparent death being the inexorable rule. Dr. Lénormand attributes the frequency of premature burials in France, first of all, to the negligence and prejudices of the families of the deceased; then to the carelessness of the doctors charged by the State with the inspection of the dead; and lastly, to the imperfection of the police regulations.

From the British Medical Journal, January 28, 1893, p. 204. (Special Correspondence, Paris.)

“PREMATURE BURIAL.

“The question whether premature burial occurs, and how to prevent it, is, notwithstanding the all-absorbing interest of the Panama question, attracting some attention here. The ‘Union Medicale’ devotes one of its feuilletons to it, in which two or three nouvelles à sensation are reproduced, and easily proved to be untrue. Premature burial cannot occur, the writer says, when a death is duly verified. The 77th Article of the Code obliges the officier de l’état civil to visit the death-bed and verify every death; but this Article is a dead letter. The officer in question has neither time nor knowledge sufficient to put it in practice. In small country places, rarely any precautions are taken to prevent premature burials. In more important villages and towns, the mayors delegate the doctors of the locality to verify deaths before burial. Throughout the whole of France, it appears that there are not fifty towns where the death-verifying service is well organised; and, on an average, there are from twenty thousand to thirty thousand burials without previous verification of death. The declaration of two witnesses is sufficient, who obtain their information from those around the deceased. In Paris, the two mortuaries already in existence—one at the Montmartre Cemetery, the other at Père La Chaise—are rarely used. The bodies of those who die in the streets, from accident or sudden death, are taken there when there is no domicile; also, those of foreigners who die in lodging-houses. In the course of eighteen months the mortuary of Montmartre received five dead bodies, and Père La Chaise one. In Germany the mortuaries are much used, and every arrangement made is in order that any who come back to life may be able to easily summon help. At Munich, a ring in connection with a bell-cord is put on one of the fingers of the hands of the dead. At Frankfort, similar precautions are taken.”

CONTINENTAL REGULATIONS.

Extracts from “Regulations for the Domiciliary Examination of the Dead in the City of Brussels Civil Government (Medical Service).”

“Article 1.—The Medical Service of the Civil Government is distributed among the medical heads of divisions, the deputies and chiefs of the Department of Hygiene.”