INTERMENT, the act of interring, that is, burying or laying a deceased person in the ground.

Aristotle asserted that it was more just to assist the dead than the living. Plato, in his Republic, does not forget, amongst other acts of justice, that which concerns the dead. Cicero establishes three kinds of justice; the first respects the gods, the second the manes or dead, and the third men. These principles seem to be derived from nature; and they appear at least to be necessary for the support of society, since civilized nations have at all times taken care to bury their dead, and to pay the last respects to their remains.

We find in history several traces of the respect which the Indians, the Egyptians, and the Syrians entertained for the dead. The Syrians embalmed their bodies with myrrh, aloes, honey, salt, wax, bitumen, and resinous gums; and they also dried them with the smoke of the fir and of the pine tree. The Egyptians preserved theirs with the resin of the cedar, with aromatic spices, and with asphaltum. These people often kept such mummies, or at least their effigies, in their houses; and at grand entertainments they were introduced, that by reciting the great actions of their ancestors they might be the more excited to virtue.

The Greeks, at first, had probably not the same veneration for the dead as the Egyptians. Empedocles, therefore, in the eighty-fourth Olympiad, restored to life Pontifia, a woman of Agrigentum, who was about to be interred. But this people, in proportion as they became more enlightened, perceived the necessity of establishing laws for the protection of the dead. «

At Athens the law required that no person should be interred before the third day; and in the greater part of the cities of Greece a funeral did not take place till the sixth or even the seventh day. When a man appeared to have breathed his last, his body was generally washed by ms nearest relations, with warm water mixed with wine. They afterwards anointed it with oil; and covered it with a dress commonly made of fine linen, according to the custom of the Egyptians. This dress was white at Messina, Athens, and in the greater part of the cities of Greece, where the dead body was crowned with flowers. At Sparta it was of a purple colour, and the body was surrounded with olive leaves. The corpse was afterwards laid upon a couch in the entry of the house, where it remained till the time of the funeral. At the magnificent obsequies with which Alexander honoured Hephaestion, the body was not burned until the tenth day.

The Romans, in the infancy of their empire, paid as little attention to their dead as the Greeks had done. Acilius Aviola having fallen into a lethargic fit, was supposed to be dead; he was therefore carried to the funeral pile; the fire was lighted up; and though he cried out he was still alive, he perished for want of speedy assistance. The praetor Lamia met with the same fate. Tubero, who had been praetor, was saved from the funeral pile. Asclepiades, a physician, who lived in the time of Pompey the Great, about one hundred and twenty years before the Christian era, returning from his country-house, observed near the walls of Rome a grand convoy and a crowd of people, who were in mourning, assisting at a funeral, and showing every exterior sign of the deepest grief. Having asked what was the occasion of this concourse, no one made any reply. He therefore approached the pretended dead body; and imagining that he perceived signs of life in it, he ordered the bystanders to take away the flambeaux, to extinguish the fire, and to pull down the funeral pile. On this a kind of murmur arose throughout the whole company. Some said that they ought to believe the physician, whilst others turned both him and his profession into ridicule. The relations, however, yielded at length to the remonstrances of Asclepiades; they consented to defer the obsequies for a little; and the consequence was that the pretended dead person was restored to life. It appears that these examples, and several others of a similar kind, Induced the Romans to delay funerals longer, and to enact laws to prevent precipitate nterments.

At Rome, after allowing a sufficient time for mourning, the nearest relation generally closed the eyes of the deceased; and the body was bathed with warm water, either to render it fitter for being anointed with oil, or to re-animate the principle of life, which might remain suspended without*manifesting itself. Proofs were afterwards made to discover whether the person was really dead, and these were often repeated during the time that the body remained exposed; for there were persons appointed to visit the dead, and to prove their situation. On the second day, after the body had been washed a second time, it was anointed with oil and balm. Luxury increased to such a pitch in the choice of foreign perfumes for this purpose, that under the consulship of Licinius Crassus and Julius Caesar, the senate forbade any perfumes to be used except such as were the production of Italy. On the third day the body was clothed according to its dignity and condition. The robe called the praetexta was put upon magistrates, and a purple robe upon consuls. For conquerors who had merited triumphal honours, this robe was of gold tissue; for other Romans it was white, and for the lower classes of the people black. These dresses were often prepared at a distance, by the mothers and wives of persons still in life. On the fourth day the body was placed on a couch, and exposed in the vestibule of the house, with the visage turned towards the entrance, and the feet near the door; and in this situation it remained till the end of the week. Near the couch were lighted wax-tapers, a small box in which perfumes were burned, and a vessel full of water for purification, with which those who approached the body besprinkled [7:12:330]themselves. An old man belonging to those who furnished every thing necessary for funerals sat near the deceased, with some domestics clothed in black. On the eighth day the funeral rites were performed; but, to prevent the body from corrupting before that time, salt, wax, the resinous gum of the cedar, myrrh, honey, balm, gypsum, lime, asphaltum or bitumen of Judaea, and several other substances, were employed. The body was carried to the pile with the face uncovered, unless wounds, or the nature of the disease, had rendered it loathsome and disgusting. In such a case a mask was used, made of a kind of plaster, which has given rise to the expression of funera larvata, used in some of the ancient authors. This was the last method of concealment which Nero made use of, after having caused Germanicus to be poisoned; for the effect of the poison had become very sensible, by livid spots, and the blackness of the body; but a shower of rain happening to fall, it washed the plaster entirely away, and thus the horrid crime of fratricide was discovered.

In the primitive church the dead were washed and then anointed; the body was wrapped up in linen, or clothed in a dress of more or less value according to circumstances, and it was not interred until after being exposed and kept some days in the house. The custom of clothing the dead is in France observed only in the case of princes and ecclesiastics.

Notwithstanding the customs above recited, still, in many places, and on numerous occasions in all places, too much precipitation attends this last office; or, if not precipitation, a neglect of due precautions in regard to the body.

A man may fall into a syncope, and remain in that condition for a very considerable period of time. People in this situation have been known to come to life when deposited amongst the dead. A boy belonging to the hospital at Cassel appeared to have breathed his last; he was carried into the hall where the dead were exposed, and was wrapped up in a piece of canvass. Some time afterwards, recovering from his lethargy, he recollected the place in which he had been deposited, and crawling towards the door, knocked against it with his foot. This noise was luckily heard by the sentinel, who soon perceiving the motion of the canvass, called for assistance. The youth was immediately conveyed to a warm bed, and soon perfectly recovered. Had his body been confined by close bandages or ligatures, he would not have been able, in all probability, to make himself be heard; Kis unavailing efforts would have made him again fall into a syncope, and he would have thus been buried alive.

We must not be astonished that the servants of an hospital should take a syncope for a real death, since even the most enlightened persons have sometimes fallen into errors of the same kind. Dr John Schmid relates, that a young girl, seven years of age, after being afflicted for some weeks with a violent cough, was all of a sudden freed from this troublesome malady, and appeared to be in perfect health. But some days afterwards, whilst playing with her companions, the child fell down in an instant, as if struck by lightning. A death-like paleness was diffused over her face and arms; she had no apparent pulse, her temples were sunk, and she showed no signs of sensation when shaken or pinched. A physician, who was called, and who believed her to be dead, in compliance with the repeated and pressing request of her parents, attempted, though without any hopes, to recall her to life; and at length, after several vain efforts, he made the soles of her feet be smartly rubbed with a brush dipped in very strong pickle. At the end of three quarters of an hour she was observed to sigh; she was then made to swallow some spirituous liquor; and she was soon afterwards restored to life, much to the joy of her disconsolate parents. A certain man having undertaken a journey in order to see his brother, on his arrival at his house found him dead. This news affected him so much that it brought on syncope, and he himself was supposed to be in the like situation. After the usual means had been employed to recall him to life, it was agreed that his body should be dissected, to discover the cause of so sudden a death; but the supposed dead person overhearing this proposal, opened his eyes, started up, and immediately betook himself to his heels. Cardinal Espinola, prime minister to Philip II. was not so fortunate; for, in the memoirs of Amelot de la Houssai, we are informed that he put bis hand to the knife with which he was opened in order to be embalmed. In short, almost every one knows that Vesalius, the father of anatomy, having been sent for to open the body of a woman subject to hysterics, who was supposed to be dead, he perceived, on making the first incision, that she was still alive; that this circumstance rendered him so odious, that he was obliged to fly; and that he was so much affected by it, that he died soon afterwards. On this occasion we cannot forbear adding an event more recent, but not less melancholy. The Abbé Prevost, so well known by his writings and the singularities of his life, was seized with a fit of apoplexy, in the forest of Chantilly, on the 23d of October 1763. His body was carried to the nearest village, and the officers of justice were proceeding to open it, when a "cry which he sent forth terrified all the assistants, and convinced the surgeon that the abbé was not dead; but it was too late to save him, as he had already received a mortal wound.

We shall conclude this article by subjoining, from Br Hawes’s Address to the Public, a few of the cases in which this fallacious appearance of death is most likely to happen, together with the respective modes of treatment which he recommends.

In apoplectic and fainting fits, and in those arising from any violent agitation of mind, and also when opium or spirituous liquors have been taken in too great quantity, there is reason to believe that the appearance of death has been frequently mistaken for the reality. In these cases, the means recommended by the Humane Society for the Recovery of Drowned Persons should be persevered in for several hours; and bleeding, which in similar circumstances has sometimes proved pernicious, should be used with great caution. In the two latter instances it will be highly expedient, with the view of counteracting the soporific effects of opium and spirits, to convey into the stomach, by a proper tube, a solution of tartar emetic, and by various other means to excite vomiting.

From the number of children carried off by convulsions, and the certainty arising from undoubted facts that some who have in appearance died from that cause have been recovered, there is the greatest reason for concluding, that many, in consequence of this disease, have been prematurely numbered amongst the dead; and that the fond parent, by neglecting the means of recalling life, has often been the guiltless executioner of her own offspring. To prevent the commission of such dreadful mistakes, no child whose life has been apparently extinguished by convulsions should be consigned to the grave till the means of recovery above recommended have been tried, and, if possible, under the direction of some skilful practitioner of medicine, who may vary them as circumstances seem to require.

When fevers arise in weak habits, or when the cure of these has been principally attempted by means of depletion, the consequent debility is often very great, and the patient sometimes sinks into a state which bears so close an affinity to that of death, that there is reason to suspect it has too often deceived the bystanders, and induced them to send for the undertaker when they should have had recourse to the succours of medicine. In such cases, volatiles, [7:12:331] eau de ^ uce ∙> f° r example, should be applied to the nose, rubbed on the temples, and sprinkled about the bed; hot flannels, moistened with a strong solution of camphorated spirit, may likewise be applied over the breast, and renewed every quarter of an hour; and, as soon as the patient is able to swallow, a teaspoonful of the strongest cordial should be given every five minutes.

The same methods may also be used with propriety in the small-pox, when the pustules sink, and death apparently ensues; and likewise in any other acute diseases, when the vital functions are suspended from a similar case.