EMBALMING AND DISSECTIONS.
AN intelligent and observing correspondent writes to the author that
“under the prevailing custom of embalming in vogue in the United
States, it is almost impossible to have a living burial, as the
injection of the fluids used in the operation would prevent revival
and make death certain. Of course, the class denominated ‘poor folks,’
who cannot afford this security, have to take their chances with the
mysteries of trance and other forms of apparent death, as well as with
ignorance, indifference, and unseemly haste, that seem to encompass a
man at a time when he is in need of the most considerate care.”
Embalming is no doubt preferable, as was thought by the late Lady
Burton, to the risks, prevailing in almost all countries, of burial
before careful medical examination, for the reason that it is better
to be killed outright by the embalmer’s poisonous injections, or even
to come to life under the scalpel of the anatomist, than to recover
underground. A leading New York investigator has openly declared his
belief that a considerable number of human beings (supposed by their
relatives to be dead, but who are really only in a state of death
trance) are annually killed in America by the embalming process.
EMBALMING.
In the second edition of Dr. Curry’s “Observations on Apparent Death,”
1815, p. 105, the case is cited of William, Earl of Pembroke, who died
April 10, 1630. When the body was opened in order to be embalmed, he
was observed, immediately after the incision was made, to lift up his
hand.
F. Kempner, in “Denkschrift,” p. 6, says:--
“Owing to some great mental excitement, the Cardinal Spinosa fell
into a state of apparent death. He was declared to be dead by his
physicians, and they proceeded to open his chest for the purpose of
embalming his body. When the lungs were laid open, the heart began
to beat again; the cardinal returned to consciousness, and was just
able to grasp the knife of the surgeon when he fell back and died in
reality.”[19]
[PREMATURE EMBALMENT.]
The _Journal de Rouen_, Aug. 5th, 1837, relates the following:--
“Cardinal Somaglia was seized with a severe illness, from extreme
grief; he fell into a state of syncope, which lasted so long that the
persons around him thought him dead. Preparations were instantly made
to embalm his body, before the putrefactive process should commence,
in order that he might be placed in a leaden coffin, in the family
vault. The operator had scarcely penetrated into his chest when the
heart was seen to beat. The unfortunate patient, who was returning to
his senses at that moment, had still sufficient strength to push away
the knife of the surgeon, but too late, for the lung had been mortally
wounded, and the patient died in a most lamentable manner.”
Dr. Hartmann in “Premature Burial,” p. 80, says:--
“The celebrated actress Mlle. Rachel died at Paris, on 4th January,
1858. After the process of embalming her body had already begun, she
awoke from her trance, but died ten hours afterwards owing to the
injuries that had been inflicted upon her.”
The _Celestial City_, New York, June 15, 1889, records:--
“MRS. BISHOP’S EXPERIENCE.
“Mrs. Eleanor Fletcher Bishop, the mother of the celebrated
mind-reader, has a thrilling experience of her own regarding the
horrors of being railroaded into the grave. Anent the unseemly haste
exercised by the doctors who made the autopsy on her son, the old lady
stated what terrible perils she at one time barely escaped. ‘I am
subject to the same cataleptic trances in which my boy often fell,’
said Mrs. Bishop. ‘One can see and hear everything, but speech and
movement are paralyzed. It is horrible. For six days, some years ago,
I was in a trance, and saw arrangements being made for my funeral.
Only my brother’s determined resistance prevented them from embalming
me, and I lay there and heard it all. On the seventh day I came to
myself, but the agony I endured left its mark forever.’”
Dr. P. J. Gibbons, M.A., says:--
“In my mind there is no doubt that bodies in which life is not extinct
are embalmed. To prevent the embalming of live bodies in cases where
doubt exists, my method for resuscitation should be resorted to. If
success does not follow, death has taken place. When one in whom the
vital spark may possibly not yet have fled is found, two objects should
be aimed at, viz., first, to restore breathing, and, second, to promote
warmth and circulation.”--_The Casket_, Rochester, New York, April 1,
1895.
The Select Committee of the House of Commons appointed in 1893 to
enquire into the subject of Death Certification, suggests in their
report that in all cases where it is desired to embalm a dead body
an authorisation should be obtained from the Home Secretary. This is
probably intended to prevent concealing cases of death by poisoning.
The Select Committee might very well have extended its recommendations
to the need of verifying the death before the embalmer was allowed to
exercise his art on the subject. Legislation in the United States,
where embalming is extensively practised among well-to-do people, is a
matter of urgent necessity. The author is aware of only one town where
the city ordinance enforces such verification before permitting burial.
Mr. M. Cooper, surgeon, in his admirable little volume “The Uncertainty
of the Signs of Death,” London, 1746, p. 196, observes that “those who
are dissected run no risk of being interred alive. The operation is an
infallible means to secure them from so terrible a fate. This is one
advantage which persons dissected have over those who are, without any
further ceremony, shut up in their coffins.”
[PREMATURE AUTOPSIES.]
The following from Ogston’s _Medical Jurisprudence_, p. 370, is a
case in point (quoted by the _Lancet_):--“In October, 1840, a servant
girl, who had retired to bed apparently in perfect health, was found
the following morning, as it appeared, dead. A surgeon who was called
pronounced her to have been dead for some hours. A coroner’s inquest
was summoned for four o’clock, and the reporter and the surgeon who
had been called in to the girl were ordered to inspect the body
previous to its sitting. On proceeding to the house for this purpose
at two o’clock, the inspectors found the girl lying in bed in an easy
posture, her face pallid, but placid and composed, as if she were in
a deep sleep, while the heat of the body had not diminished. A vein
was opened by them, and various stimuli applied, but without affording
any sign of resuscitation. After two hours of hesitation and delay, a
message being brought that the jury were waiting for their evidence,
they were forced to proceed to the inspection. In moving the body for
this purpose, the warmth and pliancy of the limbs were such as to give
the examiners the idea that they had to deal with a living subject! The
internal cavities, as they proceeded, were found so warm that a very
copious steam issued from them on exposure. All the viscera were in a
healthy state, and nothing was detected which could throw the smallest
light on the cause of this person’s death.” Tidy (_Legal Medicine_),
part i., p. 140, remarks thereon--“A mistake had no doubt been made in
this case, as its warmth was not caused by decomposition.”
In the _Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine_, edited by Sir John
Forbes, M.D., and others, 1847, vol. i., pp. 548-9, we find the
following:--“Nothing is more certain than death; nothing is more
uncertain at times than its reality; and numerous instances are
recorded of persons prematurely buried, or actually at the verge of the
grave before it was discovered that life still remained; and even of
some who were resuscitated by the knife of the anatomist.... Bruhier,
a celebrated French physician, who wrote on the uncertainties of the
signs of death in 1742, relates an instance of a young woman upon whose
supposed corpse an anatomical examination was about to be made when
the first stroke of the scalpel revealed the truth; she recovered,
and lived many years afterwards. The case related by Philippe Pue is
somewhat similar. He proceeded to perform the Cæsarean section upon
a woman who had to all appearance died undelivered, when the first
incision betrayed the awful fallacy under which he acted.... ‘There
is scarcely a dissecting-room that has not some traditional story
handed down of subjects restored to life after being deposited within
its walls. Many of these are mere inventions to catch the ever greedy
ear of curiosity; but some of them are, we fear, too well founded to
admit of much doubt. To this class belongs the circumstance related
by Louis, the celebrated French writer on medical jurisprudence. A
patient who was supposed to have died in the Hospital Salpétrière was
removed to his dissecting-room. Next morning Louis was informed that
moans had been heard in the theatre; and on proceeding thither he
found to his horror that the supposed corpse had revived during the
night, and had actually died in the struggle to disengage himself from
the winding sheet in which he was enveloped. This was evident from
the distorted attitude in which the body was found. Allowing for much
of the fiction with which such a subject must ever be mixed, there
is still sufficient evidence to warrant a diligent examination of
the means of discriminating between real and apparent death; indeed,
the horror with which we contemplate a mistake of the living for the
dead should excite us to the pursuit of knowledge by which an event
so repugnant to our feelings may be avoided.... If life depends upon
the presence of a force or power continually opposed to the action of
physical and chemical laws, real death will be the loss of this force,
and the abandonment of organised bodies to these agents; while apparent
death will be only the suspension of the exercise of life, caused by
some derangement of the functions which serve as instruments of vital
action. This suspension must have been lost for a considerable time,
if we may judge by the cases collected by credible authors, to some of
which we have alluded, and by the numerous instances of drowned persons
restored to life after long submersion. From this definition of life
and death, it would follow that putrefaction is the only evidence of
real death.’ ... The absence of the circulation of the blood has been
looked upon as a certain indication of death; but this test is not much
to be depended on, for it is well known that persons may live even for
hours in whom no trace of the action of the heart and arteries can be
perceived.”
Le Guern, in “Du Danger Des Inhumations Précipitées,” chap. iv., p. 24,
relates that “The Abbé Prévost was found in the forest of Chantilly
perfectly insensible. They thought him dead. A surgeon proceeded
to make a _post-mortem_; but hardly had he put the scalpel in the
body of the unfortunate victim before the supposed corpse uttered a
cry, and the surgeon realised the mistake he had made. Prévost only
became conscious to feel aware of the horror of the death by which he
perished.”
Dr. Franz Hartmann, in his “Premature Burial,” p. 80, has the
following:--
“In May, 1864, a man died very suddenly at a hospital in the State of
New York, and, as the doctors could not explain the cause of death,
they resolved upon a _post-mortem_ examination, but, when they made
the first cut with the knife, the supposed dead man jumped up and
grasped the doctor’s throat. The doctor was terrified and died of
apoplexy on the spot, but the “dead” man recovered fully.
Brigade-Surgeon W. Curran in his 8th paper, entitled “Buried Alive,”
relates the following:--“At the Medical College at Calcutta, on the 1st
of February, 1861,” so writes my friend as above, “the body of a Hindu
male, about 25 years of age, was brought from the police hospital for
dissection.... It was brought to the dissecting-room about 6 a.m., and
the arteries were injected with arsenical solution about 7. At 11 the
prosector opened the thorax and abdomen for the purpose of dissecting
the sympathetic nerve. At noon Mr. Macnamara distinctly saw the heart
beating; there was a regular rythmical vermicular action of the right
auricle and ventricle. The pericardium was open, the heart being freely
exposed, and lying to the left in its natural position. The heart’s
action, although regular, was very weak and slow. The left auricle was
also in action, but the left ventricle was contracted and rigid, and
apparently motionless. These spontaneous contractions continued till
about 12.45 p.m., and, further, the right side of this organ contracted
on the application of a stimulus, such as the point of a scalpel, &c.,
for a quarter of an hour longer.”--_Health_, May 21st, 1886, p. 121.
Bruhier in his work, “Dissertation sur l’Incertitude de la Mort et
l’Abus des Enterrements,” records a number of cases of the supposed
dead who, after burial, were revived at the dissecting table, together
with fifty-three that awoke in their coffins before being buried,
fifty-two persons actually buried alive, and seventy-two other cases of
apparent death. This was at a time when body-snatching was in vogue,
and it is a curious comment on our civilisation to be compelled to
admit that a subject of trance or catalepsy during the last or the
early part of the present century had a better chance of escape from so
terrible a fate than now, when the vocation of the resurrection-man has
become obsolete.