Premature Burial and How It May Be PreventedTebb, William
Science
Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented
Tebb, William
Burial, Premature
“Sir,--In your journal of last Saturday, among the ‘Medical
Annotations,’ you notice the inquiry into the circumstances under
which an infant, being still living and moving, was ‘bandaged’
beneath the chin, and ‘laid-out’ at St. Pancras Workhouse. Allow me
to state that in the _Lancet_, vol. ii., 1850, a contribution from me
‘On the Danger of Tying-up the Lower Jaw immediately after Supposed
Death’ was published. An infant, aged two months, was brought to me
on a Friday with the lower jaw tied up by its mother, who asked for a
certificate of death; but on my removing the bandage, the child began
to show symptoms of vitality, and it lived until the following Monday.
C. J. B. ALDIS, M.D., F.R.C.P.
“Chester Terrace, Chester Square, March 26, 1866.”
It is recorded that Dr. Doddridge showed so little signs of life at
his birth that he was laid aside as dead, but one of the attendants
observing some signs of life, took the baby under her charge, and by
her judicious treatment perfectly restored it.
Mr. Highmore, Secretary of the London Lying-in Hospital, confirmed
(by a communication to the Royal Humane Society, April, 1816,) the
statement of Mrs. Catherine Widgen, the matron of that excellent
establishment, that, by a zealous perseverance in the means recommended
by that Society, she had been the happy instrument of restoring from
a state of apparent death in the space of _three years_ no less than
forty-five infants, who, but for her humane attention and indefatigable
exertions, must have been consigned to the grave. Later on, Mrs. Widgen
restored in one year twenty-seven apparently dead-born children--a
striking instance of the truth of the remark of a celebrated writer
(Osiander) that “the generality of infants, considered as still-born,
are only apparently so; if, therefore, persons would persevere in their
exertions to revive them, most of them might be restored.”--_Report of
the Royal Humane Society, 1816-17, pp. 52-54._
“For these exertions the General Court adjudged the Honorary Medallion
to Mrs. Widgen, and it was accordingly presented to her by His Royal
Highness the Duke of Kent.”--_Ibid., p. 52._
[The question naturally suggests itself in this place: If the matron
of such a noble institution as the above was able to save seventy-two
apparently dead children from the grave in four years, how many of
these poor little beings are consigned to the grave all over the world
for lack of the “humane attention and indefatigable exertions,” such as
this skilful matron gave to those that came under her intelligent care?]
“RECURRENCE OF SUSPENDED ANIMATION.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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