Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-05-06
is LIFE SUSPENDED T?
Home Physicians Who Take No Stock
in Restored Animation.
DEATH EASY ENOUGH TO DISCOVER
No Need Of Burying Anybody Alive, If the
Tests Be Applied.
IF ALIVE, SOME PART WILL SHOW IT

The fact that people in trance, or under
suspended animation, have so frequently
been nearly buried alive lately, led q re-
porter from this paper to make some in
quiries yesterday among local physicians
for their opinions upon the subject. From
these statements it appears that good
many doctors do not believe in suspended
animation at all, and consider the stories
which occasionally are published nothing
but humbugs. DR.. W. F. Pollock, Of the
Southside, for instance, said yesterday: II
don't believe there is much difficulty in
finding out whether person is dead, and
the fact can be very readily determined"
Another physician, while talking to the
reporter upon the subject, was Of the same
opinion, although he did not express him
self quite so decisively. "If there have
been people who have been buried alive, I
have never been called to q case myself, and
I cannot, therefore speak from personal ex-
perience. There are
SEVERAL WAYS OF TELLING
whether animation has left the body, and
those most common are these: Take look
ing glass and hold it before the mouth of
the supposed corpse, and, if there is life left,
you will observe the breath on the surface
of the glass. Another method is to prick
the persons toe, and if blood flows the body
is still animated, but if not it is lifeless. A
third test is to take redhot piece of iron
and touch the flesh, If the burned part
shrivels up the person is dead, but if it blis-
ters life is not extinct"
'Then you do not believe that person
may ever manifest life again if the heart
stops beating for some time-say several
hours, or even days?"
''No, I do not. If the blood ceases to
circulate, if the heart stops beating, that
person is dead, in my opinion. From what
we know OF persons who are supposed to
have been in trance and
COME TO LIFE AGAIN,
I think it has always been stated that they
were cognizant of what was going on around
them. Some of them could hear and even
see, but their brain, apparently, had lost
the faculty of communicating with their
sense of speech. This proves that anima-
tion could not have been totally suspended,
or else they would not have been able to
hear or see.
Frances are often the result of nervous
nysterla or neart disease; from IN
fections or contagious diseases they never
occur, to my knowledge"
Don't you think it would be advisable
to have law regulating the time of burial
Of people who do not die of infectious or
diseases?"
Yes, that might be a good thing, and il
would possibly have the effect of preventing
the burial of animated bodies.
HE CALLS IT A MIsNoMER.
DIR. W. T. English while speaking on the
same subject last evening, said: "There
is really no such thing as suspended
animation. It is misnomer. Of course it
is possible for vitality to sink so low as to
be imperceptible by the observer; but it
1oes not follow that it is not there, at all.
Life depends Upon q tripod force, brain,
heart sRd lungs. If either Of these fails to |
vet for a certairsf .Ilme, life must be extinct"