Morning journal and courier., 1890-08-19
NO BURIALS ALIVE.

Careful Investigation Shows the Fal.
 sity of Recent Reports.
 From the Philadelphia Medical and Surgical
 Reporter]
 The fear of being buried alive haunts the minds of so many of our fellow men that it may not be regarded as strange, in some respects, that it was recently report ed that a number of physicians in a city near Philadelphia had banded themselves together to devise means to prevent such catastrophe in their own case. And, when physicians could take such measures in view of supposed danger, it is not re- markable that the community should have a special and exaggerated horror of being buried alive But this horror is as with out reason as is the timidity of the physi- clans referred to. There seems to be no good ground whatever for supposing that it is possible in this enlightened age for any person to be committed to the grave while yet living. Stories reporting such occurrences are by no means rare, but any one who examines them closely will cer tainly remark that they are wholly lacking in originality, and that there is, in fact, so strong a resemblance between them as tO cAClbc tuc SuSplClOu OuC huo OCCh copied from another Investigation will show, too, that this suspicion is a we'll founded one. At least, such has been the experience of the editor of the Medical and Surgical Reporter, who has for some years followed up every story of burial alive which came to his notice, and always with the result of learning that they were false or of failing to learn anything about their origin.
 
 The most recent experience of this sort occurred in connection with story pulp lished in the daily papers June 10, 1890, of a man who was said to have died and to have been buried alive in Chicago After tracing the story from one point of the newspaper world to another it was found to have originated in Chicago paper, which said the man had been sent as dead from hospital in that city February g, and that afterward he had been buried, that the buriers had heard sounds like knocking on the coffin lid, but went ahead with the burial, and that after an interval the grave was opened and the coffin lid re- moved to disclose that the man had turned over, torn his hair out, buried his fingers in his flesh and so on..- At the end of our investigation we received a letter from the hospital stating that it never had patient of the name given, that no person died at the hospital on the date given, and treat ing the story as hoax. The Associated Press agent in Chicago, who started the story round the country, on being asked if he thought there was any truth in it, re- piled to our representative: q .am not supposed to believe everything these fell lows [meaning the reporters] write"
 This is the latest story, and it illustrates the unreliability of all that we know any thing about and the utter lack of princi- pie which usually lies at the bottom of them. As physicians we may, by pub fishing the falseness of such stories, do they excite in the minds of many of our fellow beings, and we may hope that those who manage the daily newspapers will some day properly punish reporters who furnish them with such cruel inventions.