The abnormal psychopathological fear of being buried alive is called taphophobia, (from the Greek taphos, meaning "grave".) Literally it translates into "fear of graves." Before the era of modern medicine, this fear was not entirely irrational.
During the cholera epidemics of the 18th and 19th centuries worries reached quite a peak, and many inventions were patented at that time, but history has recorded many cases of live burial.
When is a dead person, really, all the way dead? It has not always been so clear. Physicians and undertakers have employed many unusual methods to try to determine if there is any life left in the body laying before them.
From a 2001 Wired News Article:
Administering enemas of tobacco smoke to the suspected dead had a strong following among many members of the medical profession in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Other doctors preferred to insert hot pokers into various orifices, pinch nipples with pliers, and vigorously yank on the tongue of a presumed corpse in order to ascertain that their patients were quite dead.
Tongue-pulling became so popular that a device was created to automate the procedure. The suggested modus operandi was to clamp the maybe-dead person’s tongue to the machine and then turn a crank that rapidly moved the tongue in and out of the patient’s mouth.
This procedure had to be continued for at least three hours, doctors believed, so a village’s most-easily amused person was usually assigned to the task.
Fear of being buried alive was elaborated to the extent that those who could afford it would make all sorts of arrangements for the construction of a "safety coffin" to ensure this would be avoided (e.g. glass lids for observation, ropes to bells for signaling, and breathing pipes for survival until rescued).
In 1995 a modern safety coffin was patented by Fabrizio Caselli. His design included an emergency alarm, intercom, a flashlight, breathing apparatus, and both a heart monitor and stimulator.
Jamie Sue Austin who writes for In Repose, sends us a link to Vermonter.com that has photos of the grave of Timothy Clark Smith, who, presumably, is no longer affected by taphophobia.
"Administering enemas of tobacco smoke to the suspected dead had a strong following among many members of the medical profession in the 17th and 18th centuries."
Not to be crude...
But it makes one wonder...
Is this the where the idea of "blowing smoke up someone's ass" comes from?
Posted by: Jamie Sue | September 10, 2007 at 06:14 PM