Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 January 1894 — MANY PERSONS BURIED ALIVE. [ARTICLE]

MANY PERSONS BURIED ALIVE.

A. Physician T.IU of « Saxo Msthod «f A>- . certainiar if Ufa Is ExtlacU About once in so often the newspapers are filled with accounts of premature burials, and journalists with abnormal imaginations are in demand to paint in vivid colors the agonies that must have been endured by the helpless wretches who woke up and found themselves dead. A few days such a case was reported in South Carolina. When the coffin of a young girl who had recently been buried was exhumed the bodv was contorted in a horrible manner.’the finger nails were deeply buried in the palm of the hands, the face was lacerated, and the appearance of the corpse indicated that death had not finally come without a fearful struggle. It was a good .story, and whether or not it was a “fakfi.” it will probably start the fakers oi the newspapers to work, and there will be no lack of similar blood-curdling tales for a month or two. - ♦ A well-known Chicago physician who read the yarn referred to, says: ••There are plenty of people mouldering under the sod," he said, “who were buried before life become extinct, but they were never made aware of the fact. Coffins nowadays are hermatioally sealed? and there is not enough air in one of them to bring a person to life out a trance. The luugi must have a dertain amount of oxygen before the heart will begin to act. and one full inhalation would exhaust all of the bxygen in a modern casket, and the mngs would, of course, be unable to cake another. AU these stories of fearful sufferings endured by persons buried alive are false; there’s nothing to them. ••No doubt, bodies are frequently interred while life is yet existent, butthis would not be the ease if everybody knew of a certain infallible and absolutely certain test of death. Such a test I have. It has never, so far as I am aware, been in print, and The Herald could do no better service to humanity than to publish it. I was a coroner :once.upon a time, in one of the Southernstates. An old darkey had died suddenly, and I was called to sit upon the body and determine the cause of death. When I arrived the man had been dead twenty-four hours, and the negroes of the neighborhood were preparing to hold the funeral. I imjianelicd a jury; the family of the deceased testified to the extent of their knowledge; but I was unable to find that the old fellow had any disease sufficient to kill him. I looked at the body, and examined it carefully. Then a thought struck me, and I lighted a match and applied it to the end of one of the finders of the corpse. Immediately a blister formed. 1 had the dead man put back into his bed, applied various restorations and to-day that same old darky is alive and well. •‘That is the test. Do you see the philosojrfiy of it? If you are alive you cannot burn your hand without raising a blister. Nature, in the effort to protect the inner tissues, throws a covering of water,a ntfn-conductor of heat, botween the tire and the flesh. If you were dead, and flame should come in contact with any part of your body, no blister would appear and the flesh would be burned. The blood has been withdrawn from the arteries, and your body is like so much beefsteak. ‘•All you have to do is to apply a match to any part of the supposed corpse. If life remains, however little, a biister will at' once form. Simple, isn’t it? Why, it is so simple that the most ignorant person in the world can apply it. and no expert physician could settle the question of life or death any more certainly.” —('hi'-nan Herald.