BURYING ALIVE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Every thoughtful reader will feel grateful for your directing his attention to this subject, in your able and in-
structive article in the Spectator of September 14th. The recently issued report of the Select Parliamentary Committee of 1893-94 on death-certification will tend to confirm the prevailing belief as to the unsatisfactory state of the law, as it discloses facts which cannot fail to increase the uneasiness in the public mind on this important subject. It appears that in London between 1882-84 there were 3,020 burials without any death-certification whatever, and presumably without actual medical examination as to the cause of death, or whether, in point of fact, death had really occurred. In the quinquennial period, 1886-90, in the city of Glasgow, there were 3,533 uncertified deaths, while in England and Wales in 1891 there were 26,140 cases, or over 4 per cent. of the total mortality in which the cause of death was ill-defined or unspecified. In Q. 2,552-83 remarkable evidence was produced as to the reckless mode of death-certification. One medical witness testified that he saw a certificate of death signed by a registered medical practitioner, giving both the fact and the cause of death of a man who was actually alive at the time, and who lived four days after- wards, with facts of a still more startling character, described .as "murder made easy," the details of which would occupy too much of your valuable space. The Lancet of August 24th, 1895, commenting upon this remarkable official document,. observes :—" As the law stands at present, no verification of the fact of death is necessary, the practitioner being entitled to say, ' A. B. died, as I am informed." The object of this communi- cation is to point out the serious consequences of the present lax system, not of certification, but, what is of vastly greater public concern, the examination of the dead before burial. This is usually of a very perfunctory description, and is practically no more than the momentary "view" which the coroner imposes on a jury when an inquest is held. It is known to close students of the human constitution that a percentage, small it may be, of persons of a nervous type, are liable to periods, of a longer or shorter duration, of attacks of catalepsy, trance, hibernation, and other forms of suspended animation, where the suspension of life is so marked that the most experienced physicians have been deceived, and the unfortunate victims have only been restored either just before interment or have been buried alive. Dr. Franz Hartmann, an able and painstaking scientific observer, has collected over seven hundred authenticated cases of this description, and has recently published the particulars of one hundred and eight of these cases as typical of the remainder, under the title of " Buried Alive : an Examination into the Occult Causes of Apparent Death, Trance, and Catalepsy," with suggestions based upon extensive research for the prevention of such terrible tragedies. Occasionally, the public is startled by the published reports of persons medically pronounced dead, but who came to life before or while the last rites of burial were being performed. After burial we hear no more of them, they may have been buried in a death-like trance, but the medical certificate, no matter how inconsiderately given, consigns them to perpetual silence beyond appeal or escape. Family remonstrance is then unavailing, and except in cases of strong suspicion of poisoning, no Home Secretary would grant an order for exhumation.
In the United States, owing to the expansion of towns, cemeteries are not infrequently removed, and whenever the corpses have been examined, cases of undoubted premature burial have been revealed. In New York, of one thousand cases examined, six belonged to this most unfortunate category. In Holland, the percentage of similar investiga- tions was five in a thousand. It is said that the most hopeless of cadavres are those unfortunates who, after undergoing the examination of the police inspector and the State-appointed surgeon, are deposited in the Morgue in Paris, for identifica- tion; but here also the records show that revivioation occurs to about one in three hundred cases.
Under the existing imperfect system of medical examina- tion in this country, no thoughtful person can contemplate the burial of over half a million persons annually without mistrust and misgivings. A. heart-breaking case of prema- ture burial having occurred in my own family over half a century ago has led me to study the facts of this very painful subject, and to caution my friends against accepting medical certificates as clear proof of death. Hufeland, a recognised authority, says :—" The appearance of decomposition is the only reliable proof that the vital energy has departed from an organism," and every prudent man will provide in his will for evidence of such change, or for a simple surgical opera- tion before burial.—I am, Sir, &c., T. W.
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