Burying Live Persons.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 5477, 7 February 1885, Page 3

Burying Live Persons.

A ooKKEsroNDENT thinks that in thoso days of invention it would be regarded as a groat blessing if somebody couldbring out apatent whereby we could ascertain whether a person is dead or alivo before he is buriod. It is but recently that a gentleman who had been suffering from cholera was supposed to bo dead, and was laid for burial. After a lapse of six hours a person went into the room and found the patient alivo, complaining that he had boen " loft so long." The doctor said that if he had been attended to before he had become so icy cold he would have come round. About three months ago a young woman was laid for burial, and after two days she came on to the landing of the stairs and called out, "Come to me; I am so cold." Some weeks ago, a man in Paris was supposed to have died of cholera, and as the undertaker was assisting to put him into his coffin he awoko, and was so shocked at what was going on that ho died in a fow hours afterwards. Some time since a body had to be exhumed, when it was clear from the position it was found in that the person had been buried alive. Other caßes of this sort have been reported. Some years ago a neighbour of the correspondent in Cheshire was seized with cholera, and died to all appearance. Her husband, who had been from home, met the people carrying her out to be buried. Ho insisted, however, upon seeing her, and when the coffin was opened, to their great surprise^the woman was alive, and she lived twenty-five years afterwards, and died a Bhort time ago. Surely we who are above ground might do something to prevent such awful mistakes. It is the opinion fliat no doctor should bo allowed to give a certificate of death without seeing the patient after death—a thing which they rarely if ever do. To receivo word that the patient is dead ought not to be sufficient. If there ia the least room for doubt, it would bo a mercy to use means to obviate the possibility of a person coming to life in a coffin, even if it were by the use of a lance. Some medicine has a very stupefying effect, and there Is reason to fear that thousands of people have been buried alive, and it may fall to the gentle reader's lot to be added to the number.