Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/460

 454 BURIAL they are borne to the burial ground. The ortho- dox Jews retain several of the mourning cere- monies of their ancestors. Among the lower classes of the Irish the funeral ceremonies fre- quently begin with a "wake," of which copi- ous stimulants form an important part, and the mourning often degenerates into orgies. In the burial grounds of England, France, and other European countries, it is customary for friends to strew flowers upon the graves at fre- quent intervals. In the United States burial grounds are usually outside of the limits of towns and villages, though -churchyards are still frequently used in small places; and the funeral ceremonies, varying somewhat among different denominations, are similar to those of Europe. Beautiful cemeteries have been estab- lished in the neighborhood of the principal cities, and upon the sites of many of the battle fields of the civil war. (See CEMETEBY.) The period required for the body to decay after in- humation varies gr.eatly according to the cli- mate, the nature of the soil, and the covering in which it is enveloped. Orfila and Lesueur in their experiments found nothing but the skeletons left of bodies that had been buried 14, 15, and 18 months; this period was, how- ever, unusually short. Low, damp grounds, particularly when they we percolated by wa- ter, hasten decomposition ; dry, high, and well ventilated ones, on the contrary, retard it. When numerous burials within a comparative- ly short period have occurred in a limited space, the earth becomes saturated with the products of decomposition to such a de- gree as to be incapable of further absorbing them; decomposition under such circumstan- ces is retarded, and its products escape di- rectly into the atmosphere. Burying Alive. Much unnecessary anxiety is sometimes felt with regard to the possibility of persons, sup- posed to be dead, being buried while still really living. None of the numerous stories of this dreadful accident, however, which have ob- tained credence from time to time, seem to be authentic. The premature burial of a living person must be, if it happen at all, the result of inexcusable haste or carelessness, and is in the highest degree improbable where even the ordinary precautions are taken. A proper ex- amination of the body by a competent medical man, in doubtful cases, would render such a mistake almost impossible. The signs of death are either immediate or secondary. The imme- diate signs are stoppage of the movements of the heart and the various consequences which result from their cessation. The secondary signs, which are developed only after a certain time has elapsed, are cadaveric rigidity of the muscles and the commencement of putrefaction. Of all the immediate signs, the only one which by itself is absolutely certain is the complete cessation of the heart's action. This may be ascertained by careful examination of the chest by auscultation. During a fainting fit the heart is still heard to beat, and in the dying, after the last expiration has proclaimed that all is over, after the pulse has ceased to beat, and after the hand applied over the heart finds everything still, the ear placed upon the same region still hears for a time the beating of that organ ; but when, after having listened for a sufficient time, the practised auscultator cannot distinguish the beat of the heart, life is over. In examining the heart in a number of the dying, Bouchat found that the longest interval between the pulsations was six seconds ; from a similar investigation M. Eayer found it to be seven seconds. "If," concludes the latter, " the absence of the pulsation of the heart is verified by the auscultator for a period 50 times as great as the longest observed period, or for an interval of five minutes, the patient is un- doubtedly dead." Even this, however, admits of some exceptions. In new-born infants the action of the heart may have ceased for a longer period, and yet the child revive, and the same thing is said to have occurred in the cold stage of Asiatic cholera. M. Michel Levy pro- poses on these accounts that the verification of decease should take place at two periods, separated by an interval of 24 hours, and con- siders that if on both these occasions the ab- sence of all movement of the heart for a suffi- cient length of time is noticed by a competent observer, the interment may take place in per- fect safety. When by an excess of precaution further evidence of death may be desired, he recommends the application of an iron heated to redness to the skin ; this has the double ad- vantage of distinguishing between real and ap- parent death, and of rousing the patient ener- getically where death has not occurred. The application of a red-hot iron to the living body for a length of time sufficient to cause the total destruction of the whole thickness of the skin, the injury being surrounded by a vivid redness, causes in the dead body merely a slight shrivel- ling of the epidermis, and a searing of the superficial layer of the true skin. To prevent the occurrence of premature interment, mortu- ary houses have been built in Germany and other countries, in which the dead are retained for a tune before the final interment. A bell- pull is so arranged in connection with the ex- tremities of the corpse, that the slightest mo- tion will sound an alarm, and summon an attendant constantly on the watch. So far, these precautions have been useless ; a surgeon who for 45 years had been attached to the mortuary house at Mentz, had during that pe- riod but one single alarm ; it occurred from the corpse of an old man ; the abdomen having subsided from the discharge of a large quantity of fluid, the arms had fallen lengthwise beside the body. See Funerailles des Remains, Grecs et autres nations, by Claude Guichard (Lyons, 1581) ; Ceremonies funebres de toutes les nations, by Muret (1679) ; Die Graber der Hellenen, by Stackelberg -(Berlin, 1837); Die LeicJienbestat- tung, by Trusen (Breslau, 1855) ; Ilistoire des usages funebres et des sepultures des peuples