Burying Live Persons.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 89, 14 February 1885, Page 5

Burying Live Persons.

A correspondent thinks that in these days of invention it would be regarded as a great blessing if somebody could bring out a patent whoroby we could ascertain whether a person is dead or alive before he is buried. It is but recently that a gentloman who had been suffering from cholera was supposed to be dead, and was laid for burial. After a lapse of six hours a person went into tho room and found the patient alive, complaining that he had been " loffc so long." The doctor said that if he had been attended to before he had become so icy cold ho would have como round. ' About throo 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 awoke, and was so shocked at what was going on that he died in a few hours afterwards. Some time since a body had to be exhumed, when it was clear from the position it was found in that the porson had been buried alivo. Other cases 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. He insisted, however, upon seeing her, and when the coffin was opened, to their great Burprise'the woman was alive, and she lived twenty-five years afterwards, and died a short time ago. Surely we who are above ground might do something to prevent such awful mistakes. It is tho opinion that no doctor should be allowed to give a certificate of death without seeing the patient after death— a thing which they rarely if ever do. To receive word that the patient is dead ought not to be sufficient. If there is the least room for doubt, it would be 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 medioine 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.