The St. Johns herald., 1890-08-07
A TEST OF DEATH.
A Physician Tells of 9 Sure Way of As
 certaining If Life Is Extinct.

! A Physician Tells of Sure Way of As | certaining If Life Is Extinct.
 | 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 ago such a case was reported in South Carolina When the coffin of young girl who had recently been buried was exhumed the body was contorted in horrible manner, the finger nails were deeply buried in the palms of the hands, the face was lacer- ated, and the appearance of the corpse indicated that death had not finally come without fearful struggle. It was good story, and whether or not it was fake" it will probably start the fakers of the newspapers to work, and there will be no lack of similar blood curdling tales for month or two. .
 A well-known Chicago physician read the yarn referred to, and he was so much wrought up over it that he came to the office of the Herald to learn whether the case was duly authenti- cated.
 There are plenty of people molder- ing under the sod" he said, ''who were buried before life became extinct, but they were never made aware of the fact. CofIins nowadays are dramatically sealed, and there is not enough air in one Of them to bring a person to life out of @ trance. The lungs must have a certain amount of oxygen before the heart will begin to act, and one full in halation would exhaust all of the oxygen in a modern casket, and the lungs would, of course, be unable to take an- other. All these stories of fearful sui ferings endured by persons buried alive are false; there's nothing to them.
 ''No doubt bodies are frequently in tered while life is yet existent, but this would not be the case if every body knew of a certain infallible and abso- lutely certain test of death. Such a test 1 have. It has never, so far as 1 am aware, been in print, and the Herald could do no better service to humanity than to publish it. l was a coroner once upon a time in one of the Southern States. An old darky had died sud- denly, and l was called to sit upon the body and determine the cause of death. When 1 arrived the man had been dead twenty-four hours, and the negroes of the neighborhood were preparing to hold the funeral. I impaneled jury; the family of the deceased testified to the extent of their knowledge, but l 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 thought struck me, and lighted match and applied it to the end of one of the fingers Of the corpse. Immediately blister formed. l had the dead man put back into his bed, applied various restorations, and to-day tho same old darBy is alive and well.
 That is the test. Do you see the philosophy of it? If you are alive you can not burn your hand without raising a blister. Nature, in the effort to pro- tect the inner tissues, throws a covering of water, non-conductor of heat be- tween the fire 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 blister 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. Chicago Herald.