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.

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.”

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.