Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented

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?

“Mrs. John Emmons, of North Judson, Ind., was taken suddenly ill and apparently died, a week ago. Her husband desired to keep the body for a few days, to make sure of death. It seems that her mother went into a trance for four days, rallied, and lived five years; also that her grandfather on her mother’s side, after having been pronounced dead for six days, awoke, and lived for twenty-three years. Mrs. Emmons’s body was kept until Saturday, when, on the demand of the physician and numerous residents, it was interred. During the time between Monday and Saturday the body did not become rigid. Mortification did not set in, and she was laid to rest without waiting for that, the surest of all tests, to take place. Many are of the opinion that the woman has been buried alive.”

There are many cases like the above on record, in which, although there is no absolute proof of premature burial, there is strong presumptive evidence of it. The following from Truth (London) of May 23, 1895, is an example, and the writer has heard of many others:—

“The other day I gave a story showing the difficulty of obtaining a post-mortem examination after a doctor has once certified the cause of death. One of my readers caps it with a gruesome narrative, of which this is the outline: A man lately died in London. The coffin had to be removed by rail, and was to be closed on the fourth day after the death. My informant, taking a last look at the deceased, was struck by the complete absence of all the ordinary signs of death at such a period. In particular, he states that there was no rigidity in any part of the body, and there was a perceptible tinge of colour in the forehead. He went over to the doctor who had attended the deceased, described all the signs that he had observed, and begged the doctor to come and look at the body before the coffin was closed. The doctor absolutely refused, saying that he had given his certificate, and had no doubt as to the man’s death. The friend then suggested that he might himself open a vein and see if blood flowed, to which the doctor replied that, if he did so without the authority of the widow, he would be indictable for felony. Whereupon, says my informant, who was only a friend of the family, ‘I had to retire baffled, and let matters take their course.’ Why on earth he did not take the widow into his confidence, or risk an indictment for felony by opening a vein on his own account, or even summon another doctor, he does not say. I trust that, should any friend of mine see my coffin about to be screwed down under similar circumstances, and find equal cause to doubt whether I am dead, he will summon up courage to stick a pin into me, and chance the consequences. This, however, has nothing to do with the doctor’s responsibilities. It would seem that the medico in this case was either so confident in his own opinion as to decline even to walk across the road to investigate the extraordinary symptoms described to him, or else that he preferred the chance of the man being buried alive to the chance of having to admit he had made a mistake. Which alternative is the worst I do not know.”

The Gaulois (Paris) of May 16, 1894, contains the following:—

“DEATH OR CATALEPSY?

“The funeral of the Comtesse de Jarnac, whose death was reported to have taken place on Saturday, was fixed for to-morrow, but it will probably be postponed. None of the usual signs of dissolution have appeared; the face still retains its colour, and rigor mortis has not yet set in. Some hope is even entertained that the Comtesse may be simply in a state of catalepsy, and that the embolus, to which death was attributed, may have lodged in the lungs, not in the heart, in which case it may merely have caused a stoppage of the circulation (sic). The body had not been placed in the coffin up to a late hour last night.”

STRANGULATION BY A SCARF.

One of the authors was present on May 14, 1894, with a company of ladies and gentlemen gathered at a country mansion in the Austrian Tyrol for afternoon tea, when the conversation turned upon the subject of premature burial.CASE IN THE AUSTRIAN TYROL. Among other cases related, the host described that of one of his servants, a woman, who went to bed with toothache, a long scarf being wrapped around her face and neck. As she did not appear the following morning, our host entered her room, and found her, as he supposed, strangled to death by the scarf tightly wound about her neck. A doctor was summoned, when he found that the woman was warm and limp, her face soft and coloured as in life; yet, as there was no respiration or perceptible wrist-pulse, nor beating of the heart, he regarded her as dead, and thought it would be proper to bury her. The host had doubts, however, about the case, and, having decided to observe it further, he had the woman removed to an outhouse, where she remained three days longer without any change in her appearance or condition in any way. But, as there was considerable impatience felt at the delay of the burial by the people on the estate, the host sent for two doctors to make a final examination of the woman, and decide as to the existence of life or death. The doctors found that no change had taken place—there was softness of the skin, colour in the face, limpness of the muscles, and an unmistakable warmth of the body; but, as there was an absence of apparent respiration and beating of the heart, they decided that the woman was dead, and urged her burial, which was done. They attributed the high temperature to the process of decomposition which they assumed was going on, though there was no odour of putrefaction noticed by anyone.

The probabilities are that this woman was buried alive. And in the present state of medical education on the subject of apparent death and the causes that bring it about, many physicians would have come to a like conclusion; and, as physicians know but little about it, they are not on their guard concerning its dangers.

A number of cases of apparent death that have survived—where there was strangulation from a scarf, as in this case—have been reported. The explanation in such cases is, that the pressure of the scarf around the neck keeps the venous blood from flowing down from the brain through the jugular veins, and the brain, in consequence, becomes saturated with carbonic acid gas from the detained venous blood, and a death-like stupor caused by carbonic acid poisoning ensues. Artificial respiration would, it is believed, restore such persons to consciousness.

AN UNDERTAKER’S EXPERIENCE.

A leading West End undertaker, whose letter is before me, writes under date of June 26, 1896, as follows:—“In my experience I have had but one case come under my personal observation where I had real uncertainty as to death being actually present, and that was an instance of the kind in which this calamity is only likely, in my opinion, to occur. A girl who had been to work in Borwick’s factory apparently fainted and died, and within a few days the friends buried her. When we came to close the coffin, there was no evidence of death, and we did not close it without having a doctor sent for, and receiving his assurance that she was dead. When reading the fatal cases which have come to light upon this subject, I must confess to looking back upon that instance with much fear, and it is but a poor consolation to me that the responsibility was not mine, but the medical man’s.”

The foregoing cases are recorded because they are types of a class that nearly every physician, undertaker, clergyman, or other observer has met with or heard of, and the probabilities, having regard to the existing confusion and uncertainty of opinion on the signs of death, are on the side of apparent rather than real death. On the other hand, a medical correspondent informs the author that he is sceptical as to the reported cases of narrow escapes, as on more than one occasion his efforts to verify the facts have proved abortive. It must be admitted that there are difficulties in the way of such inquiries. If the subject of trance, or narrow escape from burial, is a lady, publicity injures her prospects of marriage, and, if a young man, his reputation for business stability is endangered or prejudiced, so that this reticence on the part of relatives is hardly surprising. Such persons do not like their gruesome and unpleasant experiences to be talked about.

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