PREMATURE BURIAL.
=Premature Burial.=—In this enlightened age, with our knowledge of
respiration and the circulation of the blood, with our complete mastery
of the phenomena of death with scientific tests, it is absolutely
impossible to have such a thing as a premature burial.
Nevertheless from the earliest times the fear of premature burial has
been felt by many, and curious and strange methods have been adopted to
prevent the possibility of individuals being consigned to their graves
before life was extinct.
Tradition records many cases where, in spite of their precautions,
such unfortunate actions have happened. It may be that tradition is
an uncertain and erring guide. And yet underlying all tradition, as
Dieulafoy said, is a solid substratum of truth which the thoughtful
investigator must take into consideration. The tale of the Cologne
goldsmith's wife, that survives in the legend of the neighing
horses, may be weird, bizarre, and from a scientific point of view,
demonstratively ludicrous, but its germ is to be found in the recorded
fact that in times of epidemics, when the dying were huddled away
with the dead, mistakes did occur, and one or two were rectified by
the resurrection of the “dead.” In cases where burial took place in
commodious family vaults, the changes in the position of the coffin,
produced by atmospheric and other physical factors and were startlingly
disclosed when the vaults were opened to receive new bodies, doubtless
gave an impetus to the belief in the comparative frequency of such
mistakes. The medical man remembers that on occasions he has found
it difficult, without applying some of the common and finer tests,
to certify death in a patient dying of a lingering disease, but his
knowledge forbids him believing that such difficulties as he may
have experienced in his own practice can ever have caused his fellow
practitioner to make so grievous a mistake in a similar case. The
public has no such knowledge; it relies on the exceptional cases and
glibly credits the statement—true enough in a limited sense that there
is no certain proof of death. While it is certainly true that no single
sign can be absolutely relied upon to prove that life is extinct,
all practitioners will agree that several signs taken in combination
and methodically applied are sufficiently accurate to obviate the
possibility of mistake. Much has been made of the cataleptic condition
and the probability of mistaking it for death, which has formed the
basis of one of Poe's narratives. As a matter of fact, catalepsy, of
such a nature as to be confounded with _tota exitus_, is extremely
rare—so rare that we doubt if any practitioner with a large experience
of nervous conditions has met with more than one or two instances.
Further, even in such extremely rare conditions, the usual tests are
applicable and to the trained medical man at least clearly prove the
nature of the case. The stethoscope and the mirror held in front of
the patient's mouth are usually sufficient to demonstrate that the
patient is alive and we should want more conclusive evidence than such
as has been brought forward up to the present, to feel that cataleptic
patients have been consigned to their coffins before life was totally
extinct.
Newspaper writers delight in the fictitious and marvelous, and without
any regard whatever to the scientific phase of the subject, frequent
mention of cases of premature burial is to be found almost daily in the
press of the country. But upon investigating these newspaper stories,
it will be found that they have been either originated in the fertile
brain of some reporter or were merely published to consume space.