Premature Burial.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 18, 3 November 1909, Page 10

Premature Burial.

HOW TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN

LIFE AND DEATH

Of all the terrors that haunt the nervous mind, none is more poignant than the dread of being buried alive. Nor is this dread rare, and only present with those of morbid fancy. Innumerable testators have left behind tliem the most solemn directions to their medical attendants to open an artery or test by some other means whether their apparent death be in fact actual.

There is no doubt that some persons are buried alive, and, in spite of the edds against it, the fact breeds a foreboding horror in a great number of minds.

The danger, too, is increased by the growing practice of speedy burial. Even in England there is a marked tendency to shorten the period between death and the funeral. In Spitin and Italy burials take place commonly on the day succeeding death, and in Portugal and in parts of France the same practice obtains. Indeed, in Spain I have heard of funerals taking place on the same day as death; in all tropical countries it is the rule; and everywhere, in times of epidemic, speedy interment becomes the practice. Authenticated cases of premature burial are not few in number, and still more numerous are the cases where by pure accident premature burial lias been averted. I knew a woman who, between the time of her birth and her fourth year, was twice laid aside as dead. 1 know of a case where a man, suffering from concussion contracted on board a ship—without being able to show a sign of life—heard his brother and the captain discuss by his side whether he should be buried at sea or taken to Rotterdam. Happily, they decided on the latter course. I have heard of an Indian judge who, prostrated by cholera and unable to make the slightest sign of consciousness, listened to those around his bed order his coffin and arrange for his funeral.

The difficulty arises, of course, from the fact that certain disease or affections produce the appearance of lifelessness, and present several (if not all) of the symptoms of death. Syncope, concussion hysteria, catalepsy, have led people again and again to be pronounced as dead, for they all produce the coldness of surface and the death-like appearance, and they disguise or conceal the respiration and the circulation which practically constitute life.

Take what is commonly called the death-trance. There was such a case at Bradford, where most of the signs of death were present—livid skin, relaxed muscles, unconsciousness. Yet tha patient was found to be living, and it was only after lying for three weeks in this trance that she died. In another case a patient had been thirty-three hours in a deathlike trance—no one but a skilled practitioner could have testified to life—when the application of the electric current caused that reaction of the muscles which indicates life; and eleven hours later the patient awoke!

So with drowned persons. Resuscitation has occurred after no less than

eight hours of unconsciousness. Howl many apparently drowned persona an given up as dead after one hour’s attempt to revive them? Great indeed il the vitality of the body; new-born children have been resuscitated after the action of the heart has been suspended for twenty minutes.

In suggesting methods by which premature burial can be made an impossibility, I would point out that no person should be buried within thirty-six hours of apparent death, and no person should be buried without the certificate of a medical practitioner that he had seen the body not less than twenty-four hours after death. Inquests have been held within half-a-dozen hours of death; they, should not be held until twenty-four hours after apparent death. It is almost a certainty that no competent and careful medical man can make a mistake when examining a body twenty-four hours after death. But it is eminently desirable that a knowledge of the signs of death should be as widely dispersed as possible, and therefore I will, to put it quiee shortly, point out that three ready tests are at hand—failure to find respiration or circulation by means of the stethoscope; the gradual cooling of the body, the limbs becoming eold while the trunk is still warm; and. with the cooling, the muscles becoming rigid, first in the limbs and then in the trunk. These three symptoms, if found present together, may be regarded as conclusive. If you would add a fourth, apply an electric current to some superficial muscle twenty-four hours after death; if that muscle contracts, the person is alive. Many people, as I have said leave directions that an artery should be opened after their death. This is not necessary if the foregoing tests are applied; but should an artery be opened, then it must be remembered that if the heart is still beating, though not recognised to be by the stethescope, the flow of the blood will be jerky, and if circulation had ceased, no blood will flow, or at most, a slight continuous stream as the artery contracts.

With regard to the cooling of the body, while the temperature may fall directly at the moment of death or first go up and then fall, it will never rise again when once it has begun to fall if death has overtaken the body. So, too, with the skin. Hold a light behind the hand of a living man, and you will mark its translucency; but the skin of a dead man is opaque. Inelastic, too, it becomes. Press your thumb on the skin of a living person, and the impression you make rapidly disappears; on the skin of a dead person it remains a permanent hollowTike last, the test of the muscles. After real death, these are at first relaxed, but capable of contraction; then they become rigid and incapable of contraction and then once more relaxed, but not capable of contraction. The first stage is compatible with life, but the second and third are signs of death.

Gruesome though these tests may appear. it is likely enough that they may bring comfort to some anxious minds, and I would add for their benefit that these tests are all considered by careful medical men. “No physician,” wrote a great surgeon, “ is justified in certifying a person to be dead unless the majority of the signs of death are well marked; he should never be satisfied that life is extinct from one or two appearances merely.”