Sketcher.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 382, 3 September 1903, Page 2

Sketcher.

BUEIED ALIVE. many 'cases' recorded in the fe|V|(9 report presented to the annual !&loag meeting on 28 ih January of the London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial, was the following : 'Mrs. Ellon Crosby has had a very narrow escape from being buried alive in Crawford County. She had been pronounced dead, and preparations for the burial were being' made.; While tb6se wero in progress her daughter, 19 years old, worn out by exhaustion, lay down to rest, but her eyes had scarcely closed btfore she sprang up and peremptorily insisted that her mother's body be returned to the bed. She remarked that her mother had called to her in her sleep saying ' Mary, cten't let them bury me, alive.' The undertaker said it was but a dream, bat the daughter stoutly claimed the coßtraty, and would not ba denied, Nearly eight hours passed, when Mrs. Crosby slowly opened her eyes, and looked at her daughter, who had remained by her bfside, constantly watohing for a retura of life. Mrs. Crosby is now considered in a fair way of recovery. We receive the above from a Denver (Col.) lady and, by the same mail, a case in which an East St. Louis lady barely escaped being embalmed, and a New Hiven man in a New York hospital recovered after being pronounced dead.' Dr. J. Brindly James said he was always impressing upon his medical colleagues the necessity for subjecting a body to a number of tests before death, was certified. The best. proof was putrefaction, but there might even be symptoms of putrefaction where death had not occurred. Bodies should be temporarily removed to 'waiting mortuaries/ as was done in certain German cities. A lady in the meeting testified that, on hearing news of the loss of her property, she went into violent hysterics for two hours, and then was thought to have died. After being left for .24 hours she was taken out of bed, rolled on the floor, and needles and pins stuck in her. Next morning one of the servants, on looking at her body on tho bed, thought it had moved. The doctor was sent for again, but he ceitiflsd that she was undoubtedly dead, and so the colfin was ordered. Three hours afterwards her daughter said, 'I don't think mother is dead,' and applied somo brandy to the cold lips. ' Then I cama to,' said the lady, who added,' That was five years ago. I have my death certificate at home. Although I could not move I could hear everything. I heard the men take my measurement for thec<ffia.' • 'That,' said Mr. Arthur Lovell, 'was a state of trance with which I am rather familiar. It is quite possible for all feeling' to be suspended, and for the motor nerves to bo arrested in action, and not the slightest sign of life to appear, and yet for the person to ba alive. The great danger is that now we are living in a neurotic age, in consequence of the struggle of lifo getting keener and keener snd our nervous systems are very liable to get into a state leading to results such as this ltdy hai described. What we want are State appointed certifiers to examine all cases of supposed decease.' Another lady in tho meeting certified i

that she knew a girl at Kensington who 'came to* after being pronounced dead, and who remembers hearing the doctor saj. • Ah, poor thing, now she is out of her Buffering.' Someone asked Or James whether the tests he was in the habit of applying would have enabled him to tee that the lady who had given her experience was not really dead. He replied that he thought they would. Mr. Arthur Lovell questioned that opinion. The arrest of animation in animals, he said, could be as complete as the arrest of animation in the grain of Egyptian wheat, which, on being taken out of the mummy, after being quiescent for thousands of years, at once became animate. It was incidentally mentioned that hundreds of ' deaths from chloroform take place every year, and many of them are undoubtedly merely trances.' The meeting pissed a resolution in favor of a bill 'to provide that no burial shall take place without a medical certificate of death, and that no such certificate shall be given without personal examination and inspection of thn body for the purpose of seeing whether putrefactive decomposition has commenced ; and by requiring rural and sanitary authorities to establish waiting mortuaries in or conveniently near to their rerp active districts.'—' Diily Nawd.'