Dimensions
163 x 216 x 25mm
Readers of Edgar Allen Poe's tales may comfort themselves with the notion that Poe must have exaggerated: surely people of the 1800s could not have been at risk of being buried alive? But such stories filled scholarly medical journals as well as popular fiction, and fear in the populace was high.
In this extensively illustrated book, Jan Bondeson explores the medicine, folklore, history, and literature of Europe and the United States to uncover why such fears arose, and whether they were warranted.
Bizarre 19th-century security coffins with bellropes, escape hatches and breathing tubes were invented to rescue the prematurely interred, and the macabre waiting mortuaries for decaying corpses ensured that death was absolutely certain before burial.
Finally, Bondeson questions whether today's methods for determining death are truly reliable. Could it be possible that we might be buried alive, with all of modern medicine's safeguards? Don't be too quick to dismiss your fears.
