The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1898-11-26

cate on which q burial permit Is issued. Is
is not even required thai the carse Of death
shall be certified to by a physician. 1t is
left to laylnea to say that death has occur
red, and d doctor need not even see the
body of the person supposed to be dead.
Danger of taking live persons for dead,
he explained, still remained, even after all
tests for determining death had been tried
Not one, he declared, but what failed un-
der certain conditions. Thus the most
common test of all, trying to discover II
breath had stopped, was always invoked,
for science knew of casss of suspended
animation where breathing had ceased for
AZ hours. So with the stopping OF the
leart and on through the entire list. All
signs failed in cases of suspended anima-
ton. There was only u sure proof OF
death, decomposition of the body.
That physicians and trained nurses were
DECEIVED by the appearance Of death Was
shown, he said, by q case In a Paris hos
pital. A woman, pronounced dead by
doctor and nurses, was removed TO the
1deadhouse to await removal to the disssct-
ing table. Groans were heardA IN the nights.
but they were unheeded. 1t was discover
ed in the morning that the woman had res
turned to life in the night, partially torn
off her shroud and moved her limbs. She
was lead at the time of this discovery.
OF the horror of being buried alive, Dr.
Garrigues said it had been contended by
his opponents that there was little real
suffering in such a death; that sufocation
came speedily to end all. Disputing this
view, DR.. Garrigues related the discoy-
cries made in southern Russia among a
sect whose members were entombed before
death. When the tomb was opened, hs
said, appearances indicated that the very
Young and old had died comparatively
easily. Not so with young women. Ihey
had struggled in frenzy in their Efforts TO
burst through the walls.
Undertakers kill persons, DR.. GarrigueS
believes, and their chief accomplics in
ending human life is the common fear
mortals have OF dead bodies. A loved
relative apparently dies in the night. The
living are afraid of the dead and at once
send for the undertaken. He drags the
I supposed dead body cut of bed and claps
it on ice, where it would be frozen to
/ death anyway.
He told of an instance in his w prac-
| tice where he found a beautiful girl laid
out on, the floor in winter with all tho
windows open. She was dead then That
temperature would have frozen her to
death had she been alive when taken q
of bed and placed there, and the doctor
was not sure that she was not
Again he was called to a house, which
he reached after the undertaken, and
found a weeping widow sitting beside her
husbands body, which had been taken
from bed still warm and stretched out l0
an ice box.
DIR. Garrigues said that in New YORK
there was little danger of meeting these
horrors if a person bad a little money, bue
| that the destitute would find their way to
the dissecting room. The others would be
cared for by the undertakes. BE did ncn
| altogether favor the custom of some Euro
pean countries of having doctors appoint-
ed to examine every body and issue the
death certificates. Politics might creep
into the appointments and lead 90 the Sc
lection of incompetent men.
In his opinion the regularly authorized
practitioner of medicine could perform
this duty perhaps with greater safety, but
in every instance, he held, they should be
required TO certify that they had person-
ally examined the body and to the presencs
or absence of all signs of death.
Until such certificate Is made, said
the doctor. the supposed dead should be
treated as living, and nothing done that
would pain or harm them if alive. Until
there is such a law there is nothing TO IN
sure us against being buried alive or killed
! by an unGertalser