- ホーム
- > 洋書
- > 英文書
- > History / World
Full Description
Through a detailed and fascinating exploration of changing medical knowledge and practice, this book provides a timeline of humankind's understanding of physiological death. Anchored in Early Modern Britain, it explains how evolving medical theories challenged the ambiguous definition of death, instigating anxieties over the newly realized potential for officials to mistake a person's time of death. Fears of premature burials were materialized as newspapers across Europe printed hundreds of articles about people who had been misdiagnosed as dead and were then buried--or nearly buried--alive. These stories, tallied in this text, present the first contemporary statistic of how frequently misdiagnosed death led to premature burial during the eighteenth century.
The public consciousness of premature burial manifested itself in many ways, including the necessity of having a wake before a funeral and the creation of safety coffins. This book also explores the folkloric phenomenon of the rising dead and the stories that inspired a number of authors including Coleridge, Byron and Stoker, who blended medical understanding with fiction to create vampire literature.
Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments viii
List of Abbreviations
Glossary
Introduction
1. Foundations of Western Medicine and Misdiagnosed Death
2. The Function of Anatomy and Physiology in the Seventeenth Century
3. The Body, the Soul, and the Diagnosis of Death
4. The Burial Process and Premature Repercussions
5. The Corpse as a Commodity in a Changing World
6. The Medical Community Responds to Misdiagnosed Death
7. Nineteenth Century Scholars Weigh In
8. The Restless Dead
Conclusion
Appendix: Source List for Cases of Apparent Death Misdiagnosed as Death
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
