I recently read a book called "Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach. It talks about several ways in the past people and doctors used to insure one is really dead and would not be buried alive. Some of these ways were; slicing the bottoms of a corpses feet with razors, jamming needles under toenails, and ears assaulted with bugle fanfare. A French clergy recommended thrusting a red-hot poker up ones "rear passage". They tried nipple pinchers invented specifically for the purpose of reanimation. Another tried administering tobacco enemas using bellows. Jacob Winslow used pouring hot wax on ones forehead and warm urine in the "patients" mouth. Other attempts used crawling insects be put into the corpses ears. French physician Jean Laborde wrote at great lengths about rhythmic tongue pulling to be carried out no later than three hours after ones death. But for simplicity nothing matches thrusting a sharpened pencil up the presumed cadavers nose.
Eventually doctors agreed the only reliable way to insure one is dead was putrefaction. And so it was that special buildings were erected called waiting mortuaries. They were large, ornate halls built for warehousing the moldering dead. Even in death men could not be trusted so they had separate rooms for men and women. Attendants were hired to keep watch for signs of life, from another room due to the considerable stench, which they did via a systems of strings linked to the fingers of corpses tied to a bell. This is where 'saved by the bell' originated. As years passed not one resident was saved and the establishments began to close, and by 1940, the waiting mortuary had gone by the way of the nipple pincher and tongue puller.
Vince
Eventually doctors agreed the only reliable way to insure one is dead was putrefaction. And so it was that special buildings were erected called waiting mortuaries. They were large, ornate halls built for warehousing the moldering dead. Even in death men could not be trusted so they had separate rooms for men and women. Attendants were hired to keep watch for signs of life, from another room due to the considerable stench, which they did via a systems of strings linked to the fingers of corpses tied to a bell. This is where 'saved by the bell' originated. As years passed not one resident was saved and the establishments began to close, and by 1940, the waiting mortuary had gone by the way of the nipple pincher and tongue puller.
Vince
