Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented

Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented

A concurrence of peculiar circumstances, beginning in May, 1895, has directed public attention in England to the subject of premature burial, probably to a greater degree, so far as the authors recollection serves, than at any time during the past half-century. Amongst these may be mentioned the publication of several recent cases of premature burial in the English and American papers; the narrow escape of a child found in Regents Park, London, laid out for dead at the Marylebone Mortuary, and afterwards restored to life; the issue in Boston, U.S., of Dr. Franz Hartmanns instructive essay, entitled, Buried Alive: an Examination into the Occult Causes of Apparent Death, Trance, and Catalepsy (a considerable number of copies having been sold in England), and the able leading articles and correspondence on the subject in the Spectator, Daily Chronicle, Morning Post, Leeds Mercury, The Jewish World, Plymouth Mercury, Manchester Courier, To-Day, and many other daily and weekly journals. It is curious, that while many books and pamphlets relating to this important subject have been issued in France and Germany, no adequate and comprehensive[10] treatise has appeared from the English press for more than sixty years past, nor writings in any form, with the exception of a paper by Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson in No. 21 of the Asclepiad, published in 1889, on the Absolute Signs of Death, sundry articles in the medical journals from time to time, and a London edition of Dr. Hartmanns volume in January, 1896. The section upon Real and Apparent Death in the 1868 edition of the late Professor Guys Forensic Medicine begins with the words, This subject has never attracted much attention in England, and no medical author of repute has treated it at any lengtha remark not less true after the lapse of a generation. The following chapters have been prepared with the view, not so much of supplying this omission, as of guiding the public to the dangers of our present mode of treating the apparent dead, in the hope that reforms and preventive measures may be instituted without delay in order to put an end to such unnecessary domestic tragedies. In introducing the subject the author is aware that the great majority of the medical profession in this country are either sceptical or apathetic as to the alleged danger of living burial. Many do not believe in the existence of death-trance or death-counterfeits, and the majority of those who do believe in them declare that cases are very rare, and that if consciousness is ever restored in the grave it can only[11] last a second or two, and that those who live in fear of such an occurrence should provide for a post-mortem or for the severance of the jugular vein. Many persons, on the other hand, after much careful inquiry, are of opinion that cases of premature burial are of frequent occurrence; and that the great majority of the human race (outside of a few places in Germany, where waiting mortuaries are established, or where the police regulations, such as those described in this volume as existing in Wrtemburg, are efficiently and systematically carried out) are liable to this catastrophe. Important as the subject is allowed to be, and numerous as are the reported cases, no effective steps, either public or private, appear to have been taken, outside of Germany and Austria, to remedy the evil. At present a majority of the people appear content to trust to the judgment of their relations and to the ordinary certificates of death to safeguard them from so terrible a disaster. That death-certificates and death-verifications are often of a most perfunctory description, both as to the fact of death and the cause of death, has been proved by overwhelming evidence before the recent House of Commons Committee on Death-Certification. Such certificates, when obtained, may be misleading and untrustworthy; while in many cases burials take place without the doctor having either attended the patient or examined the body. Nor, in spite of the appointment[12] of death-verificators by our neighbours across the Channel, is this important precaution effectively carried out by them. M. Devergie reports that in twenty-five thousand communes in France no verification of death takes place, although the law requires it; and he demands that no diploma shall be given without the candidate having proved himself conversant with the signs of death. (Medical Times, London, 1874, vol. i., p. 25.) On personal inquiry from medical authorities in France, during the present year (1896), we learn that this laxity still prevails. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 50460
Author: Tebb, William
Release Date: Nov 15, 2015
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Vollum, Edward Perry, -1902