THE TREATMENT OF THE DEAD.
THE following extracts from French, English, and American authorities,
who have made the subject of premature burial one of patient research,
show how the dead, or apparently dead, were treated in their respective
countries at the time they wrote, and when no reforms had been
instituted. Buffon, who wrote more than a century ago, said:--“Life
often very nearly resembles death. Neither ten, nor twenty, nor
twenty-four hours are sufficient to distinguish real from apparent
death. There are instances of persons who have been alive in the grave
at the end of the second, and even the third day. Why, then, suffer to
be interred so soon those whose lives we ardently wished to prolong?
Most savages pay more attention to deceased friends and relatives,
and regard as the first duty what is but a ceremony with us. Savages
respect their dead, clothe them, speak to them, recite their exploits,
extol their virtues; while we, who pique ourselves on our feelings, do
not show common humanity; we forsake and fly from our dead. We have
neither courage to look upon or speak to them; we avoid every place
which can recall their memory.”
In his “History of the Modes of Interment among Different Nations,” pp.
191-193, Mr. G. A. Walker, surgeon, quotes the following observations,
as deserving consideration on the subject of premature interment:--“On
many occasions, in all places, too much precipitation attends this
last office; or, if not precipitation, a neglect of due precautions
in regard to the body in general; indeed, the most improper treatment
that can be imagined is adopted, and many a person is made to descend
into the grave before he has sighed his last breath. Ancient and
modern authors leave us no doubt respecting the dangers or misconduct
of such precipitation. It must appear astonishing that the attention
of mankind has been, after all, so little aroused by an idea the most
terrible that can be conceived on this side eternity. According to
present usage, as soon as the semblance of death appears, the chamber
of the sick is deserted by friends, relatives, and physicians; and the
apparently dead, though frequently living, body is committed to the
management of an ignorant and unfeeling nurse, whose care extends no
further than laying the limbs straight, and securing her accustomed
perquisites. The bed-clothes are immediately removed, and the body is
exposed to the air. This, when cold, must extinguish any spark of life
that may remain, and which, by a different treatment, might have been
kindled into flame; or it may only continue to repress it, and the
unhappy person afterwards revive amidst the horrors of the tomb.
“The difference between the end of a weak life and the commencement of
death is so small, and the uncertainty of the signs of the latter is
so well established, that we can scarcely suppose undertakers capable
of distinguishing an apparent from a real death. Animals which sleep
in the winter show no signs of life. In this case, circulation is
only suspended; but were it annihilated, the vital spark does not so
easily lose its action as the fluids of the body, and the principle
of life, which long survives the appearance of death, may re-animate
a body in which the action of all the organs seems to be at an end.
But how difficult it is to determine whether this principle may not
be revived.... Coldness, heaviness of the body, a leaden, livid
colour, with a yellowness in the visage, are all very uncertain signs.
M. Zimmermann observed them all upon the body of a criminal, who
fainted through dread of that punishment which he had merited. He was
shaken, dragged about, and turned in the same manner as dead bodies
are, without the least signs of resistance, and yet, at the end of
twenty-four hours, he was recalled to life by means of the volatile
alkali.” Mr. Walker’s history was written nearly sixty years ago, but
the custom he deprecates still continues.
[IN THE UNITED STATES.]
Dr. Moore Russell Fletcher, in his “Suspended Animation and
Restoration,” Boston, 1890, p. 19, speaking of the treatment of the
dead in the United States, says:--“It is doubtful whether modern
civilisation has much advanced the rites of burial, or the means of
preventing interment before positive death. The practice now is, as
soon as apparent death takes place, to begin at once preparing the body
for burial; the relatives and physician desert the room, pack it in ice
or open the windows, thus banishing any possible chance of reviving or
resuscitating any spark of vitality which may exist. No examination
is ever made by the physician or the friends to see if there are even
the faintest signs of life present. Under such circumstances, and with
no attempts made at discovering whether any signs of life were still
present (but a hasty burial instead), it is not strange that cases of
premature interment frequently occur.”
The Rev. Walter Whiter, in his “Dissertation on the Disorder of
Death,” 1819, p. 328, sensibly observes:--“The signs marked on the
dying and the dead are fallacious. The dying man may be the sinking
man, exhausted by his malady, or perhaps exhausting his malady, and
fainting under the conflict. Exert all the arts which you possess,
and which have been found not only able to resuscitate and restore
the dying, but even the dead; rouse him from this perilous condition,
and suffer him not, by your supineness and neglect, to pass into a
state of putrefactive death.” And in p. 363:--“If the humane societies
had applied the same methods in various cases of natural death which
they have adopted in the case of drowning, and if they had obtained a
similar success in the cultivation of their art, the gloom of the bed
of death would be brightened with cheering prospects, and would have
become the bed of restoration and the scene of hope.”
[AN OPENING FOR THE PROFESSION.]
In this connection we may remark that no profession is more overcrowded
at the present time than that of medicine, particularly in the United
Kingdom, the English Colonies, and the United States. Hundreds of young
men graduate from medical colleges every year, vainly seeking openings
for a practice; and some, for the purpose of gaining a livelihood,
resort to expedients which the _Lancet_ denounces as undignified,
unprofessional, and disgraceful.[18] Then, again, the number of nurses
and of those qualifying for this honourable vocation is already
in excess of the demand, and nursing institutions under the keen
competition to which they are subjected, are reducing their charges.
Now, the care and treatment of the supposed dead is an honourable
vocation, offering a wide field for the instructed physician and the
tender and sympathetic nurse, and if the appliances for resuscitation
were always at hand, as they should be, in every hospital, town-hall,
mortuary, police station, and in all large hotels and churches, many
lives now subjected to the risks of premature burial would be saved.
While in London there are two or more houses or retreats for the dying,
there is no place for the apparently dead but a shunned and neglected
coffin. The time is not far distant when the present mode of treating
the dead and the apparently dead--a practice born of superstition
and fear, by which many are consigned to premature graves--will be
catalogued amongst the barbarisms of the nineteenth century.