Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented

by William Tebb; Edward Perry Vollum

THE QUESTION OF PREMATURE BURIAL BEFORE THE FRENCH SENATE.

FRENCH CASES.

The Medical Times, London, 1866, vol. i., p. 258, under the heading “Buried Alive” remarks as follows:—“The abundance of other topics hinders us at present from saying more than a few words on the conditions under which there may be real danger of burial before life is quite extinct. Now, we will only reproduce the cases reported by Cardinal Archbishop Donnet, in the French Senate, in a discussion on a petition that the time between death and burial should be lengthened. We will add one instance, which we have heard on the best authority:—About thirty years ago, a young woman of eighteen, daughter of Madame Laligand, living in the Rue des Tonnelliers, at Beaune, in Burgundy, was supposed to have died. The ordinary measures were taken for interment. The body was put in a coffin, and taken to the church; the funeral service was said, and the cortége set out for the cemetery; but on the road between the church and the cemetery the supposed dead recovered power of motion and speech, was removed from the coffin, put to bed, recovered, married, and lived eighteen years afterwards. She said she retained her consciousness during the whole of her supposed death, and had counted the nails that were driven into her coffin. Statements such as these, and such as those made by the Archbishop, will surely be subjected to the ordeal of a French scientific commission, and we may suspend our judgment for the present. To return to his Eminence. He said he had the very best reasons for believing that the victims of hasty interments were more numerous than people supposed. He considered the rules and regulations prescribed by the law very judicious; but, unfortunately, they were, particularly in the country, not always executed as they should be, nor was sufficient importance attached to them. In the village he was stationed in as an assistant-curate in the first period of his sacerdotal life, he saved two persons from being buried alive. The first an aged man, who lived twelve hours after the hour prescribed for his interment by the municipal officer; the second was a man who was quite restored to life. In both cases a trance more prolonged than usual was taken for actual death. The other instances, says the Times’ correspondent, I give in the words of the Archbishop:—

“‘The next case that occurred to me was at Bordeaux. A young lady, who bore one of the most distinguished names in the Department, had passed through what was supposed the last agony, and, as apparently all was over, the father and mother were torn away from the heartrending spectacle. As God willed it, I happened to pass the door of the house at the moment, when it occurred to me to call and inquire how the young lady was going on. When I entered the room, the nurse, finding the body breathless, was in the act of covering the face, and, indeed, there was every appearance that life had departed. Somehow or other, it did not seem to me so certain as to the bystanders. I lady not to give up all hope—that I was come to cure her, and that I was about to pray by her side. “You do not see me,” I said, “but you hear what I am saying.” My presentiments were not unfounded. The word of hope I uttered reached her ear and effected a marvellous change, or, rather, called back the life that was departing. The young girl survived; she is now a wife, and mother of children, and this day is the happiness of two most respectable families.’

“The Archbishop mentioned another instance of a similar revival in a town in Hungary during the cholera of 1831, which he heard that day from one of his colleagues of the Senate, as they were mounting the staircase. But the last related is so interesting, and made such a sensation, that it deserves to be repeated in his own words:—

CARDINAL DONNET’S EXPERIENCE.

“‘In the summer of 1826, on a close summer day, in a church which was exceedingly crowded, a young priest, who was in the act of preaching, was suddenly seized with giddiness in the pulpit. The words he was uttering became indistinct; he soon lost the power of speech, and sank down on the floor. He was taken out of the church and carried home. All was thought to be over. Some hours after, the funeral bell was tolled, and the usual preparations made for the interment. His eyesight was gone: but if he could see nothing, like the young lady I have alluded to he could hear, and I need not say that what reached his ears was not calculated to reassure him. The doctor came, examined him, and pronounced him dead; and after the usual inquiries as to his age and the place of his birth, etc., gave permission for his interment next morning. The venerable bishop, in whose cathedral the young priest was preaching when he was seized with the fit, came to his bedside to recite the “De Profundis.” The body was measured for the coffin. Night came on, and you will easily feel how inexpressible was the anguish of the living being in such a situation. At last, amid the voices murmuring around him, he distinguished that of one whom he had known from infancy. That voice produced a marvellous effect and superhuman effort. Of what followed I need say no more than that the seemingly dead man stood next day in the same pulpit. That young priest, gentlemen, is the same man who is now speaking before you, and who, more than forty years after that event, implores those in authority, not merely to watch vigilantly over the careful execution of the legal prescriptions with regard to interments, but to enact fresh ones in order to prevent the recurrence of irreparable misfortunes.’”

To this report of the Medical Times it may be added that the petition of M. de Carnot furnished statistics showing the frequency of these terrible disasters, and suggested various preventive measures, including the establishment of mortuaries, a longer interval between death and burial, and the application of scientific methods of restoration where decomposition is not manifest. The reality of the terrible dangers, as pointed out by Cardinal Donnet, was confirmed by Senators Tourangin and Viscount de Baral, in the recital of other cases of premature interment.

When the subject was revived in the Senate on January 29, 1869—on which occasion five petitions were presented, urging important reforms, and detailing other cases of premature interment,—Cardinal Donnet again took part in the debate, and urged that no burial should be permitted without the signature of a doctor or officer of health, as well as the written authorisation of the Mayor, so that the fact of death might always be verified. The Cardinal then furnished particulars of another recent case of premature interment in l’Est, and recalled the fact that one of their honourable colleagues of the Senate, M. le Comte de la Rue, had had a narrow escape from live sepulture.