Summary Of Do We Bury Alive

On January 3rd, 1857 an article was printed in the Harper’s Weekly newspaper. The article, ‘Do We Bury Alive’, addresses the very real threat of premature internment during this time. The author tells many stories of people being buried alive in different ways to let the readers know that it is an ongoing problem that is more common than they may think. Then, after expressing to the readers the gravity of the situation, the author writes about the apparatus the he encountered in Germany that was made to prevent this ghastly fate, and his hopes to implement the system in America. The first example of premature burial the author gives is one where the victim is unconscious at the time of entombment. What's so important about this first story
Erskine's conscious burial was very famous among the people back then, but it is hard to measure how truthful it was. However, the next example the author gives is also of conscious burial and is from a much more reliable source. While on business his friend met a man who is left handed. The man explained it is because a few years ago he was stung by a bee in the neck resulting in the symptoms of lockjaw, and within a few hours he was rigid and all doctors pronounced him dead. He was conscious of everything going on around him during his funeral, only able to watch as his friends and family said their goodbyes. Before the coffin was shut for good he was able to use all his willpower to twitch his eyelids to alert his father that he was still alive. After two days of restorative applications life returned to his body, all except his right arm, which still remained
Addressing this, he says, “And would it not be humanity to provide the means of preventing such a calamity, if it were to befall but a single individual in a century?”. With this comment, he introduces the system the Germans have implemented. It is custom in the country that when a person dies, they are put into a ‘dead-house’ until the body begins decomposing, at which point it is finally buried. The rooms in the dead-house are warmed in winter and cooled in summer, and the bodies are treated with such care and tenderness as if they were still alive. Thimbles are placed on each finger on each hand of the body. The thimbles are attached to strings, which are connected to bells. The apparatus is set up so delicately so that even the slightest movement of any part of the body will ring the bell. A sexton is on attendance day and night so that if a bell is to ring, he may hear it and began the revival process on the body. In the house the author visited, they had never had a dead body be brought back. However, the attendant told the author that some of their other houses across the country had reported instances of the bodies moving and the attendants bringing them back to