CHAPTER VII.
PROBABLE CASES OF PREMATURE BURIAL.
There is a great and natural reluctance on the part of medical practitioners to admit that they have made mistakes in death-certification, particularly in any one of the various forms of death counterfeits, or suspended animation. It should be noted that amongst the lectures delivered on special occasions, such as the opening of the medical schools, the subjects of trance and the danger of premature burial are conspicuous for their absence; allusion to these subjects is of rare occurrence, nor does the study of this abstruse branch of medicine, so far as can be ascertained, form part of any medical curriculum. In the bibliography at the end of this volume, extensive as it is, I can hardly refer to a single instance. Dr. Franz Hartmann, whose work on “Buried Alive” has passed through two English and one German edition, informs me that the same reticence is observable in the medical schools of Germany. Many medical men do not believe in death-trance. They declare that they have never seen such a case, and in their judgment when a sick patient ceases to breathe, when volition is suspended, and the stethoscope reveals no signs of cardiac action, the death is real, and the case beyond recovery. The evidence disclosed in this volume is the result of inquiry in many countries.
From the Medical Times, London, 1860, vol. i., p. 65.
“A lady entering upon the ninth month of pregnancy died of pneumonia. All the other phenomena of death ensued, except that the colour of the face was unusually life-like. On the fifteenth day from that of death there was not the least cadaveric odour from the corpse, nor had its appearance much altered, and it was only on the sixteenth day that the lips darkened. The temperature of the atmosphere had undergone many changes during the time mentioned, but although there had been frost for a short period, the weather was in general damp and cold.”
This lady might not have been dead. The burial laws should have been such as to make it certain that she was dead before interment, by the appearance of general decomposition.NEIGHBOURS’ INTERFERENCE. The examination of facts collected by well-known physicians at home leads to the conclusion that cases of narrow escapes from premature burial are by no means of rare occurrence. And it must be obvious to the least reflective reader that in countries where burial follows quickly upon supposed death (as in Turkey and France, some parts of Ireland, and throughout India), or where there is no compulsory examination of the dead (as in the United States or the United Kingdom), and amongst people like the Jews (since the Jewish Law enjoins speedy interment), and especially in cases of sudden death (where attempts at resuscitation are rare), the number of premature burials may be considerable.
In the United States, while there is no law, as in France, enforcing burial within a prescribed number of days, it is the custom of civil authorities, under regulations made by the Boards of Health, to compel interments if delayed by reason of doubt as to actual death beyond a few days.
Particulars of the following case were sent me by a physician, January 17, 1894:—
“WAS SHE ALIVE?