Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented

by William Tebb; Edward Perry Vollum

The account of the accident that befell the other anatomist is taken from Terilli, and runs as follows:—

“A lady of distinction in Spain, being seized with an hysteric suffocation so violent that she was thought irretrievably dead, her friends employed a celebrated anatomist to lay open her body to discover the cause of her death. Upon the second stroke of the knife she was roused from her disorder, and discovered evident signs of life by her lamentable shrieks extorted by the fatal instrument. This melancholy spectacle struck the bystanders with so much consternation and horror that the anatomist, now no less condemned and abhorred than before applauded and extolled, was forthwith obliged to quit not only the town but also the province in which the guiltless tragedy was acted. But though he quitted the now disagreeable scene of the accident, a groundless remorse preyed upon his soul, till at last a fatal melancholy put an end to his life.”

Physicians of the earlier ages knew that there were disorders which so locked up or destroyed the external senses that the patients labouring under them appeared to be dead. According to Mr. Le Clerc, in his “History of Medicine,” Diogenes Laertius informs us “that Empedocles was particularly admired for curing a woman supposed to be dead, though that philosopher frankly acknowledged that her disorder was only a suffocation of the matrix, and affirmed that the patient might live in that state (the absence of respiration) for thirty days.”

Mr. Le Clerc, in the work already quoted, tells us that “Heraclides of Pontus wrote a book concerning the causes of diseases, in which he affirmed that a patient is without respiration in certain disorders for thirty days, and that they appeared dead in every respect, except corruption of the body.”

To these authorities we may add that of Pliny, who, after mentioning the lamentable fate of Aviola and Lamia, affirms—“That such is the condition of humanity, and so uncertain the judgment men are capable of forming of things, that even death itself is not to be trusted to.”

Colerus, in “Oeconom.” part vi., lib. xviii., cap. 113, observes, “That a person as yet not really dead may, for a long time, remain apparently in that state without discovering the least signs of life; and this has happened in the times of the Plague, when a great many persons interred have returned to life in their graves.” Authors also inform us that the like accident frequently befalls women seized with a suffocation of the matrix (hysteria).

Forestus, in “Obs. Med.,” 1. xvii., obs. 9, informs us—“That drowned persons have returned to life after remaining forty-eight hours in the water; and sometimes women, buried during a paroxysm of the hysteric passion, have returned to life in their graves; for which reason it is forbidden in some countries to bury the dead sooner than seventy-two hours after death.” This precaution of delaying the interment of persons thought to be dead is of a very ancient date, since Dilberus, in “Disput. Philol.,” tome i., observes that Plato ordered the bodies of the dead to be kept till the third day, in order to be satisfied of the reality of death.

The burial customs of the ancients often included steps that were taken as a precaution against mistaking the living for the dead. Indeed the fear of such an accident seems to have always been entertained as a thing liable to occur in every case of seeming death. The embalming process employed by the Egyptians was a surgical test of the kind. The abdomen was first opened in order to remove the intestines, and some startling experiences must have been had in consequence of the incisions required for this operation, because it was customary for the friends and relatives of the deceased to throw stones at the persons employed in embalming as soon as the work was over, owing to the horror with which they were struck upon witnessing what must have been at times a cruel proceeding.

The funeral ceremonies used in the Caribbee Islands are, in a great measure, conformable to reason. They wash the body, wrap it up in a cloth, and then begin a series of lamentations and discourses calculated to recall the deceased to life, by naming all the pleasures and privileges he has enjoyed in the world, saying over and over again, “How comes it, then, that you have died?” When the lamentations are over, they place the body on a small seat, in a grave about four or five feet deep, and for ten days present aliments to it, entreating it to eat. Then, convinced that it would neither eat nor return to life, they, for its obstinacy, throw the victuals on its head, and cover up the grave. It is evident from the practices of this people that they wait so long before they cover the body with earth, because they have had instances of persons recalled to life by these measures.