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"Offers potential solutions as well as terrifying anecdotes"--Back cover.
Long out of print, this book was written by a prominent physician to reassure the many 19th century people who were worried about being buried aliveOne of the authors himself had a narrow escape with live burial, as his collaborator writes: "Dr. Vollum first became interested in the important question of Premature Burial in consequence of his own very narrow escape from live sepulture, having been pronounced dead from drowning, and prepared, for interment, when consciousness happily returned spontaneously." This edited version of the book extracts the most spine-chilling stories of narrow escapes and living burials from a mass of historical material. It includes such chapters as Animal and So-called Human Hibernation, Narrow Escapes from Premature Burial, Premature Burial of Doubtful Cases, Death-Counterfeits, The Danger of Hasty Burials, Sudden Death, Embalming and Dissections, and Count Karnice-Karnicki's Invention.
In the seminal collection 'Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented,' editors Edward Perry Vollum and William Tebb assemble a provocative array of writings that delve into the macabre yet historically significant fear of being buried alive. The anthology spans a diverse array of literary stylesfrom firsthand accounts to medical treatiseshighlighting the multifaceted ways in which this fear has permeated cultural and medical consciousness. It sheds light on the technological and sociological measures societies have taken to prevent such an occurrence, standing out as a comprehensive exploration of a topic that straddles the line between irrational fear and legitimate concern. The contribu...
Through a detailed and fascinating exploration of changing medical knowledge and practice, this book provides a timeline of humankind's understanding of physiological death. Anchored in Early Modern Britain, it explains how evolving medical theories challenged the ambiguous definition of death, instigating anxieties over the newly realized potential for officials to mistake a person's time of death. Fears of premature burials were materialized as newspapers across Europe printed hundreds of articles about people who had been misdiagnosed as dead and were then buried--or nearly buried--alive. These stories, tallied in this text, present the first contemporary statistic of how frequently misdiagnosed death led to premature burial during the eighteenth century. The public consciousness of premature burial manifested itself in many ways, including the necessity of having a wake before a funeral and the creation of safety coffins. This book also explores the folkloric phenomenon of the rising dead and the stories that inspired a number of authors including Coleridge, Byron and Stoker, who blended medical understanding with fiction to create vampire literature.
NEWCASTLE CHRONICLE. "Society is indebted to the authors for a scientific and temperately written treatise, in which the more sensational and horrifying cases are avoided, with the view of sparing the reader unnecessary pain. There can be no question that the sooner this subject is actively dealt with the better for the community." HOMOEOPATHIC WORLD. "An important work containing a vast amount of unimpeachable evidence to show that a very real danger exists, and that strong measures ought to be taken to safeguard the public against it." PALL MALL GAZETTE. "Horrible as are some of the details, they enforce the authors' plea for more careful examination of the presumably dead, and their argum...
During the 1800s, stories filled medical journals as well as fiction (Poe's "The Premature Burial") of people being buried before they actually died. Canvassing medical records of the time, the author presents an engrossing and witty history of the fear and facts of being buried alive. Illustrations.