Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented

by William Tebb; Edward Perry Vollum

“Exposure to cold may also induce a suspension of vitality liable to be mistaken for actual death. This year the French Senate has again received several petitions relative to premature interments.... And, considering the length of time that trances, catalepsies, lethargies, and cases of suspended animation have been known occasionally to continue, it is scarcely, in England, less interesting to us, though public feeling, which is only an expression of natural affection, approves, and indeed almost compels, a longer delay. The attention of the French Government being once more directed to the subject, there is little doubt that all reasonable grounds for fear will be removed.[20]

“The petitioners have requested, as a precaution, that all burials for the future should, in the first instance, be only provisional. Before filling a grave, a communication is to be made between the coffin and the upper atmosphere by means of a respiratory tube; and the grave is not to be finally closed until all hope of life is abandoned. These precautions, it will be seen at once, however good in theory, are scarcely practicable. Others have demanded the general establishment of mortuary chambers, or dead-houses, like those in Germany. And not only the petitioners, but several senators, seem to consider that measure the full solution of the problem. Article 77 of the Civil Code prescribes a delay of twenty-four hours only, which appears to them to be insufficient, since, they urge, it admits the certainty that death has taken place only after putrefactive decomposition has set in. Now, a much longer time than twenty-four hours may elapse before that decomposition manifests itself. Deposit, therefore, your dead in a mortuary chapel, until you are perfectly sure, from the evidence of your senses, that life is utterly and hopelessly extinct.

DIFFICULTY OF DIAGNOSIS.

“When Article 77 of the Civil Code was under discussion by the Council of State, Fourcroy added: ‘It shall be specified that the civil officer be assisted by an officier de santé (a medical man of inferior rank to a doctor of medicine); because there are cases in which it is difficult to make certain that death has actually occurred, without a thorough knowledge of its symptoms, and because there are tolerably numerous examples to prove that people have been buried alive.’

“In Paris, especially since Baron Hausmann’s administration, Article 77 has been strictly fulfilled; but the same exactitude cannot be expected in out-of-the-way nooks and corners of the country, where a doctor cannot always be found at a minute’s warning, to declare whether death be real or apparent only. It is clear that the Legislature has hit upon the sole indisputable practical solution; the difficulty lies in its rigorous and efficient application.

“It has been judiciously remarked that it would be a good plan to spread the knowledge of the sure and certain characteristics which enable us to distinguish every form of lethargy from real death. It cannot be denied that at the present epoch the utmost pains are taken to popularise every kind of knowledge. Nevertheless, it makes slow way through the jungles of prejudice and vulgar error. Not long ago it was over and over again asserted that an infallible mode of ascertaining whether a person was dead or not was to inflict a burn on the sole of the foot. If a blister full of water resulted, the individual was not dead; if the contrary happened, there was no further hope. This error was unhesitatingly accepted as an item of the popular creed.

“The Council of Hygiene, applied to by the Government, indicated putrefaction and cadaverous rigidity as infallible signs of actual death. In respect to the first—putrefaction—a professional man is not likely to make a mistake; but nothing is more possible than for non-professionals to confound hospital rottenness (gangrene) with true post-mortem putrefaction. M. de Parville declines to admit it as a test adapted for popular application. Moreover, in winter, the time required for putrefaction to manifest itself is extremely uncertain.

“The cadaverous rigidity—the stiffness of a corpse—offers an excellent mode of verifying death; but its value and importance are not yet appreciable by everybody, or by the first comer. Cadaverous rigidity occurs a few hours after death; the limbs, hitherto supple, stiffen; and it requires a certain effort to make them bend. But when once the faculty of bending a joint is forcibly restored—to the arm, for instance—it will not stiffen again, but will retain its suppleness. If the death be real, the rigidity is overcome once for all. But if the death be only apparent, the limbs quickly resume, with a sudden and jerking movement, the contracted position which they previously occupied. The stiffness begins at the top, the head and neck, and descends gradually to the trunk.

“These characteristics are very clearly marked; but they must be caught in the fact, and at the moment of their appearance, because, after a time of variable duration, they disappear. The contraction of the members no longer exists, and the suppleness of the joints returns. Many other symptoms might be added to the above; but they demand still greater clearness of perception, more extended professional knowledge, and more practised habits of observation.