Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1911-02-05
Being BURIED ALIVE
AN AWFUL DREAD
Has Affected More Than One
Sane Man or Woman

The sensational allegations of Dr..
Icard, of Marseille, France, regarding
the hasty manner in which patients
dying in French hospitals are hurried
on to autopsy, dissection, or burial,
have won for him a prize from the
Academy Of Sciences; not so much, it
is said, because Of the serious founda-
ton for his charges as on account Of
the merit of the simple tests which lie
has proposed for making sure that
death has actually occurred, and thus
to guard against the horrible fate Of
being immured alive.
no small or uninteresting part of
the history of peoples is that having
to do with the mortuary customs md
obseryances. 1t would seem some
what strange that the dictum of earth
to earth has been most generally
observed by civilized nations, whereas
many of he savage or semibarbarods
races follow the custom of Open-air
burial, if such a term may properly be
used, although there are noteworthy
exceptions, as with the Parsees, whose
greWsOme towers of silence" are
used for the exposure of the naked
corpse to the action of the elements
and the yet quicker depredations of
birds of prey. But it is among the
lower civilizations generally that open
air exposure has been practiced, the
tree and scaffold burials Of he western
American aborigines finding their
counterpart in similar customs among
the Australian bushmen and in the
canoe burial OF Aleuts and other Eski-
mos. Subterranean. burial has been
the rule, however, with those who
attach the most value to human life.
Abraham purchased the cave of Mach
pelah that he Nigh use it ito bury his
dead out Of sight and Joseph. though
his body was embalmed according 10
the Egyptian custom, gave explicit in
structions that, when the children of
Israel went out fthe country of their
bondage, they should carry his bones
with them into the promised land. The
graves of later Jewish period were
mainly caves or comparatively speciau
tombs hewn out of the solid rock, while
during the early Christian era the
bodies of the faithful were laid in
inches cut in the walls of the cata-
combs.
The dread of being buried alive has
afflicted more than than one sane man
and woman Evidently the idea was
frequently present in the mind of Poe,
since he refrs to such a fate in more
than one of his stories, although his
love for the grotesque and horrible
may explain his use of the themerdi
may explain his use of the theme.
Others have made the thought serve
as basis for tales Of horror, one of
Kpling's best stories THE Strange
Ride of Morrowby Jukes," dealing with
the experiences of unfortunate Hindus
indiscreet enough to come to life after
being pronounced dead, and doomed
in consequence to less tender merciss
than those Of the burning CHAT.
1T is probable that the chances Of
premature burial have been largely ex-
agerated. Yet it is a recognized scien-
tific fact that many forms of bodily
seizure, such as frances and other
kinds of cataleptic disorder, so closely
simulate death as to be scarcely dis
tinguishable from the successive stag
es of the cessation of bodily functions
itself. This being granted, it would
seem that DR.. Tcard had rendered en-
important service to humanity in
bringing the Who'll esubject into prom
inence, and in proposing the adoption
of effective means to prevent the Dos
sibiliy of premature burial.