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:—

The Journal de Rouen, Aug. 5th, 1837, relates the following:—

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:—

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.”

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.