Extra Credit Questions

[Linda Anderson]

(03-10-2013 07:54 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Stanton left college after two years and returned to his job at the book store. In the summer of 1833, cholera swept eastern Ohio. Edwin had developed a close relationship with the daughter of the owner of the boardinghouse where he was living. Her name was Ann Howard. One day, Edwin came home at the dinner hour (what we call lunch), and Ann served him his meal. He returned to his job, and one hour later, Ann collapsed. She was dead within four hours.

Fearing the contagion, she was buried immediately. Edwin had a premonition that she was still alive, and by lamplight, he and a young medical student dug up her body to make sure that she was really dead -- this while exposing themselves to the dreaded disease.

I was thinking of Poe's "The Premature Burial" after reading Laurie's post. Maybe Stanton's behavior wasn't so odd after all.

"Fear of burial alive was deeply rooted in Western culture in the nineteenth century,[1] and Poe was taking advantage of the public's fascination with it.[2] Hundreds of cases were reported in which doctors mistakenly pronounced people dead.[3] In this period, coffins occasionally were equipped with emergency devices to allow the "corpse" to call for help, should he or she turn out to be still living.[4] It was such a strong concern, Victorians even organized a Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive.[5]"

1. Meyers, Jeffrey: Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. Cooper Square Press, 1992. p. 156.
2. Kennedy, J. Gerald. Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing. Yale University Press, 1987. p. 58-9
3. Premature burial in the 19th century
4. Meyers, Jeffrey: Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. Cooper Square Press, 1992. p. 156.
5. Premature burial in the 19th century

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Premature_Burial