SEPULTURE OF THE LIVING. 
MARVIN DANA, M. A., LL. B., F. R. G. S. 
IN the eighteenth century whole nations believed in vampirism. In 
Greece, Russia, Poland, and Hungary, unnumbered corpses were 
dragged from their graves, the heads cut off and burned, and the 
bodies left at cross-roads with stakes driven through the hearts. The 
superstition of the time taught that these were ghouls, who prolonged 
an unnatural and hideous existence within the tomb by subtly absorb- 
ing for their nourishment the vital energies of those yet living. Their 
ghastly careers could only be terminated by the disinterment and muti- 
lation of their carcasses. 
Our first impulse is to abhor such brutal treatment of the dead, 
while we marvel at the ignorance that sanctioned it as legal procedure. 
Yet the cruel folly was not wholly without excuse. The accused dead 
were put on trial, and the sentence was determined by circumstantial 
evidence. When the living sickened without apparent cause and 
wasted away, the secret source of their affliction was believed to be 
the vampire ghosts that came forth from the sepulchres to suck the 
blood of life for their own uncanny nourishment. Thereupon the sus- 
pected bodies were taken from their graves for examination. If they 
had suffered corruption they were declared innocent. But if they 
retained their flesh untainted by decomposition, with the blood fluid in 
their veins, they were adjudged guilty, and the final penalties of their 
crimes were visited upon them. The official records of the time prove 
to us that many were thus condemned by reason of their unchanged 
bodies, though they had been weeks entombed. 
The inevitable conclusion to which we are forced is that in vam- 
pirism we find a ghastly witness to the extent of living sepulture. In 
the written account of the punishment of vampire corpses, there are 
statements to the effect that some of the bodies were convulsed at the 
last moment as if in torture, that the blood flowed, the eyes unclosed ; 
that one shrieked as if in agony. We need not question the truth of 
such assertions. They are authoritatively made, and are to be accepted 
as credible. We cannot doubt that many, if not all, of the victims of 
vampirism were of those most afflicted of all human beings, those tor- 
mented by fate, who are numbered with the dead, and cast into the 
earth, while yet the breath of life is in them. 
My own observation, pursued for a number of years, prepares me 
to assert that in this country one person each week is buried alive. 
935 THE ARENA. 
936 
This is the mildest statement possible, since it refers only to the cases 
where bodies are exhumed, indubitable traces of life in the grave 
detected, and the facts are reported in the public press. When we con- 
sider that hardly one in a thousand of the bodies buried is ever again 
examined, when we consider that weekly one of the few examined 
is found to have been buried alive, we are appalled at the awful possi- 
bilities- aye, the awful realities-as to the extent of living sepulture. 
Physicians are not partial to public utterances on the subject. 
The theme is too horrible for popularity. They hesitate to declare the 
facts, since the facts are rather injurious to themselves, as showing 
their inability, under certain conditions, to distinguish between life and 
death. Moreover, in the generality of cases, the remedial methods 
are doubtful, or difficult of execution. I have discussed the subject 
with many men prominent in the medical world, and, without excep- 
tions, they refuse to be quoted on the subject, but in their confidences 
most of them have admitted the accuracy of the facts I have already 
set forth, and a few have agreed with me in the theories which I shall 
now detail. 
My attention was first seriously called to the subject at the time 
of Washington Irving Bishop's death. I was well acquainted with the 
celebrated mind-reader, and was with him once when he fell into a 
cataleptic state and when the physicians who were summoned pro- 
nounced him dead. I have no wish to revive the question as to 
whether or not the haste of the physicians who performed the autopsy 
on Bishop was satisfied in operating on a corpse or on a living body. 
It is enough for my present purposes to say that the inquiry incident 
to his death attracted my particular attention to the phenomena of cata- 
lepsy, and, in consequence, to the subject of living sepulture. 
It should be understood that when a person is in the cataleptic 
trance every test of death known to medical skill may warrant the belief 
that the person is dead. To mention but one example: a woman, now 
living, was twice pronounced dead, prepared for burial, and saved from 
being buried alive by accident. In this case the fallibility of tests is 
dreadfully apparent, because the first mistake was known to the physi- 
cians when they made their second examination. On this account 
they used every precaution and painstakingly proved her to be dead, - 
though she is not yet. 
Self-induced catalepsy is a possibility. We need not consider the 
Oriental fakirs, who are claimed to possess the ability to suspend ani- 
mation for almost any length of time. Regarding these as doubtful, 
despite the formal evidence in their favor, there are persons living 
to-day who can at will enter into a condition of trance, and in some 
the trance is so profound as to present all the appearances of death. SEPULTUKE OF THE LIVING. 
937 
Catalepsy is not a disease. Physicians admit that they know little 
concerning it, but one eminent authority has asserted that, of itself, it 
is never fatal. Indeed, from an elaborate examination of a large num- 
ber of cases, I may declare that disease is hardly ever fatal when the 
patient falls into a cataleptic state. 
Now, from the two paragraphs above we may deduce two proposi- 
tions of extreme importance to the subject of living sepulture: 
First, catalepsy is a form of hypnotic trance; 
Second, catalepsy is a nature's method of combating disease. 
Both of these propositions deserve our thoughtful attention. They 
are, I believe, supported by enough evidence to render them highly 
probable, and, therefore, to be accepted as true until scientific investiga- 
tion shall have become exact. Let us, then, examine the proposition 
that catalepsy is a form of hypnotic trance. 
In the hypnotic trance the subject's will slumbers. In the deep 
trances there is a suspension of activity in the vital functions. The vital 
organs rest. Voluntary movement is an impossibility. The Nancy and 
Paris schools alike unite in believing so much, and we may regard that 
much of hypnotism as determined. 
But that much of hypnotism in which all the experts are agreed, 
exactly applies to cataleptic trance. 
Catalepsy is caused by nervous exhaustion or disease ; it is caused 
by the hypnotic influence of another person; it is caused by auto- 
suggestion in the case of certain individuals; it is caused, in what is 
known as epidemic catalepsy, by auto-suggestion that takes the form 
of persistent fear lest the cataleptic condition should come, - the phy- 
sicians say caused by imitation. In all of these the resemblance to the 
causes of hypnotic trance are so marked as to need no comment. 
In the cataleptic trance ordinarily the subject is aware of that which 
goes on round about. One ignorant of hypnotism might believe that 
this fact differentiated the cataleptic from the hypnotic condition. In 
truth, the hypnotized person ordinarily is aware of that which goes on 
round about. Only in the most profound sleep is this not the case, 
apparently, but in a number of very careful investigations the apparent 
variation has been shown to be merely apparent, and not real. 
Having said so much to establish the probable identity of catalepsy 
with hypnotic trance, I shall proceed to my second proposition that 
catalepsy is a nature's method of combating disease. 
Many have a mistaken notion to the effect that the hypnotic trance 
is peculiarly exhausting to the subject. On the contrary, the slumber 
itself is absolute rest for the subject. Of course, while asleep he, like 
any somnambulist, may go through fatiguing exercises, but if left to 
repose, that repose is more restful than ordinary sleep, inasmuch as it is 938 
THE ARENA. 
more profound than ordinary sleep. Any number of experiments, in 
and out of the hospitals, prove conclusively that hypnotic trance is most 
refreshing to the subject, and restores from the consequences of fatigue 
or exhaustion more rapidly than any other known means. 
Applying our knowledge of this fact to catalepsy, which we may 
now believe to be identical with the hypnotic trance, we are prepared to 
suspect that the patient who falls into catalepsy would thereby receive 
rest and succor against the exhaustion of disease. Such is the inevi- 
table conclusion from our theory. Turning to our facts for confirma- 
tion, we find that, almost without exception, the patient who enters into 
the cataleptic state recovers from his disease. The only requirement is 
intelligent treatment when the cataleptic condition supervenes. It would 
seem that nature, in using the cataleptic trance, makes its final effort to 
save the patient from death. Through it, the torment or the atrophy 
of disease is succeeded by repose the most peaceful, the most profound, 
that the mortal body experiences. The time during which the slumber 
continues is determined by the patient's requirements. It may be short, 
it may be long. 
It is obvious that, if catalepsy is a nature's method of combat- 
ing disease, no effort should be made to arouse the patient from the 
healing slumber. Evidently, to do so would be to thwart nature's last 
effort. If the means employed, usually violent, are successful, the 
nervous shock must be tremendous, the result disastrous. On the 
other hand, if the means employed are not successful, the patient will 
probably be buried alive. 
One other phase of the subject is most important. We know that 
the cataleptic subject is, ordinarily, conscious of that which occurs in 
his presence. The subject is in an hypnotic trance, and, therefore, 
is powerfully influenced by suggestion. The testimony of persons 
thought to be dead is to the effect that often they, too, believed that they 
were dead. They heard themselves declared to be dead, and accepted 
the declaration without question. In view of this, it is apparent that, 
when the physicians solemnly pronounce the patient dead, when the 
family wail over the supposed corpse, and the undertaker makes it 
ready for burial, the unhappy victim, in his trance incapable of any 
exercise of will, bound, like the puppet of a mesmerizer, to believe 
whatever is said to him, however unreasonable, - that unhappy victim 
may, though living and conscious, be assured of his own decease, may 
accept as eminently reasonable his descent into the grave, the falling of 
the clods on his coffin, may be undeceived only when nature's thwarted 
effort to combat disease ends, and he awakes to know the horror of his 
fate, to die, indeed, unheeded, bound to a brief but awful torment in 
the blackness of the tomb. SEPULTURE OF THE LIVING. 
939 
To suggest means for lessening the present evils is a difficult task. 
Cremation of the dead is of no particular benefit. To be burned alive 
in an instant, is better, doubtless, than to die in the ground, but what 
we desire is a death unassisted by our friends' mistaken haste. 
In the first place, the apparent death of the person should not be 
commented on in the presence of that person, on account of the influ- 
ence of such suggestion in delaying or preventing the return to a nor- 
mal condition. The patient should be regarded as sleeping, and what- 
ever is said or done in his presence should not contradict the idea that 
he will awake. 
As to the other phase of the question, the avoiding of living 
sepulture: The tests for determining death as they are made by phy- 
sicians to-day are not conclusive, so far as cataleptic subjects are con- 
cerned. To bury the living is, indeed, a grave crime against humanity's 
rights. It requires a grave preventive measure. My own researches 
and those of many others make me positive that there is but one sure 
proof of death - the corruption of the body. Other tests fail; that 
test never fails. It is the only certain means, and should always be 
awaited as the proof of death, before the body is treated as a corpse. 
Artificial means of preventing that corruption should be done away; 
autopsies should forego their scientific haste, for the sake of giving the 
patient every chance of life ; in fine, until the visible and undeniable 
evidence of death appeal's, the patient has a supreme right to be treated 
as one who lives, despite all superficial signs to the contrary. 
The remedy is repugnant to us, but it need not be. Assuredly, at 
the worst, it is incomparably less repugnant than living sepulture. If 
all thus buried could come forth from their graves to tell us of their 
horrid death within the sepulchre, as many have come already, could 
we hesitate for a moment before that ghastly phalanx of the tortured ? 
Could we wilfully increase that grewsome and accusing company, for 
the sake of a sentiment ? Let us retain our dear ones as living, until 
death shows us, by his own plain signet of corruption, that they are his.