Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented

by William Tebb; Edward Perry Vollum

Lamentations of a similar kind were employed by the Jews and Romans, as well as by the ancient Prussians and the inhabitants of Servia, founded doubtless upon similar experiences.

The Thracians, according to Herodotus, kept their dead for only three days, at the end of which time they offered up sacrifices of all kinds, and, after bidding their last adieu to the deceased, either burned or interred their bodies.

According to Quenstedt, the ancient Russians laid the body of the dead person naked on a table, and washed it for an hour with warm water. Then they put it into a bier, which was set in the most public room in the house. On the third day they conveyed it to the place of interment, where the bier, being opened, the women embraced the body with great lamentations. Then the singers spent an hour in shouting and making a noise in order to recall it to life; after which it was let down into the grave and covered with earth. So that this people used the test of warm water, that of cries, and a reasonable delay, before they proceeded to the interment.

In the laws and history of the Jews, there is but one regulation with respect to interment (in the twenty-first chapter of Deuteronomy), where the Jewish legislator orders persons hanged to be buried the same day. From this, one is led to infer that the funeral ceremonies, as handed down from Adam, were otherwise perfect and unexceptionable. The bier used by the Jews, on which the body was laid, was not shut at the top, as our coffins are, as is obvious from the resurrection of the Widow of Nain’s son, recorded in the seventh chapter of Luke, where these words occur:—“And he came and touched the bier, and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise; and he that was dead sat up and began to speak.”

Gierus and Calmet inform us that the body, before its interment, lay for some days in the porch or dining-room of the house. According to Maretus, it was probably during this time that great lamentations were made, in which the name of the deceased was intermixed with mournful cries and groans.

Mr. Boyer, member of the Faculty at Paris, observes that such lamentations are still used by the Eastern Jews, and even by the Greeks who embrace the articles of the Greek Church. These people hire women to weep and dance by turns round the body of the dead person, whom they interrogate with respect to the reasons they had for dying.

Lanzoni, a physician of Ferrara, informs us that “when any person among the Romans died, his nearest relatives closed his mouth and eyes, and when they saw him ready to expire, they caught his last words and sighs. Then calling him aloud three times by his name, they bade him an eternal adieu.” This ceremony of calling the name of the dying person was called Conclamation, a custom that dates prior to the foundation of Rome, and was only abolished with paganism.

Propertius acquaints us with the effect they expected from the first Conclamation—since there were several of them. He introduces Cynthia as saying, “Nobody called me by my name at the time my eyes were closing, and I should have enjoyed an additional day if you had recalled me to life.”

Conclamations were made also by trumpets and horns, blown upon the head, into the ears, and upon neck and chest, so as to penetrate all the cavities of the body, into which, as the ancients imagined, the soul might possibly make her retreat.