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Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear

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"A necrobibliac classic: it may keep you up all night—not from fear but from fascination."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Readers of Edgar Allan Poe's tales—just think of The Premature Burial—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 medical journals as well as fiction, and fear in the populace was high. It was speculated, from the number of skeletons found in horrific, contorted positions inside their coffins, that ten out of every one hundred people were buried before they were dead. With over fifty illustrations, Buried Alive explores the medicine, folklore, history, and literature of Europe and the United States to uncover why such fears arose and whether they were warranted. "A weird and wonderful little tome."—Salon.com "Bondeson weaves a strange disturbing, and weirdly enthralling tale. Cremation never sounded so good."—Lingua Franca "A most useful and entertaining book....Deserves a place on every bedside table in America."—Patrick McGrath, author of Martha Peake: A Novel of the Revolution

ISBN-13: 9780393322224

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Norton - W. W. & Company - Inc.

Publication Date: 03-17-2002

Pages: 322

Product Dimensions: 6.20(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

Jan Bondeson, a physician, holds a Ph.D. in experimental medicine and works at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology in London.

Read an Excerpt




Chapter One


Miracles of the Dead


In our graveyards with winter winds blowing
There's a good deal of to-ing and fro-ing
But can it be said
That the buried are dead
With their nails and their hair still growing?
—Anonymous nineteenth-century limerick<

Table of Contents

Introduction 9
I. Miracles of the Dead 17
II. The Lady with the Ring and the Lecherous Monk 35
III. Winslow the Anatomist and Bruhier the Horror Monger 51
IV. The Eighteenth-Century Debate 72
V. Hospitals for the Dead 88
VI. Security Coffins 118
VII. The Signs of Death 137
VIII. Skeptical Physiologists and Raving Spiritualists 155
IX. The Final Struggle 183
X. Literary Premature Burials 204
XI. Were People Really Buried Alive? 238
XII. Are People Still Being Buried Alive? 258
Notes 283
Index 309