There are many
such cases on record, and it is a popular superstition of the
laity that all the gruesome tales are true of persons buried
alive and returning to life, only to find themselves hopelessly
lost in a narrow coffin many feet below the surface of the earth.
Among the lower classes the dread of being buried before life is
extinct is quite generally felt, and for generations the medical
profession have been denounced for their inability to discover an
infallible sign of death. Most of the instances on record, and
particularly those from lay journals, are vivid exaggerations,
drawn from possibly such a trivial sign as a corpse found with
the fist tightly clenched or the face distorted, which are the
inspiration of the horrible details of the dying struggles of the
person in the coffin. In the works of Fontenelle there are 46
cases recorded of the premature interment of the living, in which
apparent has been mistaken for real death. None of these cases,
however, are sufficiently authentic to be reliable. Moreover, in
all modern methods of burial, even if life were not extinct,
there could be no possibility of consciousness or of struggling.
Absolute asphyxiation would soon follow the closing of the coffin
lid.
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