THE TREATMENT OF THE APPARENTLY DEAD.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR...] SIR,—A medical authority, who has devoted many years study to the subject of premature burial, writes :— "One is often filled with pride and satisfaction at the thorough- ness and success which in the course of time attend most matters that relate to human advancement and the well-being of the race. Almost everything, in fact, that concerns the interests of man- kind by means of forethought, stimulated by competition, is attended to in a systematic and effective manner, excepting the serious and important matter of the treatment and disposal of the dead. As, for example, where the dead are allowed to rot in graveyards and cemeteries within the precincts of rapidly growing cities and pollute both air and water, or when persons attacked with catalepsy or other death-counterfeits are treated as if actually dead (judged by appearance merely), whereas in many cases they are capable of resuscitation if the proper means were employed, or even without such means if sufficient time were allowed to do so. All such persons should be treated with tender- ness and unremitting care, like a helpless sick person, and not like a mutilated or putrefying corpse. There is. I believe, nothing in human affairs so ignorantly and negligently treated as this. The advent of a person into this world at birth is foreseen, welcomed, and provided for with loving solicitude by everything appropriate and with a degree of scientific skill hardly sur- passed in any branch of medicine. But the same individual at the middle or termination of his career (should he perchance have fallen into one of the numerous forms of seeming death) runs a serious risk of being treated ignorantly, and even cruelly, by his best friends, and instead of receiving the tender solicitude to which he is entitled, may be treated as a nuisance and buried alive. The difference between the consideration shown in these two cases is due to the fact that everything that relates to the new being—at conception, and on to birth—is thoroughly taught in all medical schools, while little or nothing is taught in any of them regarding the counterfeits of death, or of the dangers that exist of mistaking seeming for actual death, or of the means that should be employed to distinguish the one from the other."
I will only add that a comprehensive treatise of over four hundred pages, by two writers, dealing with this important but greatly neglected subject, is announced by Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein and Co. to appear in October, which it is hoped may be instrumental in awakening public attention to a much-needed reform.—I am, Sir, Sze., JAS. rt. WILLIAMSON.
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