It was not always easy to tell if a corpse was really dead
Determine if the dead were actually killed was a bewildering and inaccurate science before the advent of modern medicine. But fear was not entirely irrational. Throughout the history there have been numerous cases of people accidentally buried alive and curious legends spoke of open caskets where he was a corpse with a long beard, or the palms of the hands raised up, or destroyed by the effort of having tried to escape ... Some people were so afraid to wake up in a coffin who left explicit instructions that his heart was being stabbed and his throat cut before being buried. So, and as a result of that fear, or "taphophobia" (taphos Greek, meaning "grave" and that translates as "fear of graves"), different techniques were used to establish the definitive nature of the alleged deceased. It is said that Paracelsus (1493-1541), alchemist and perhaps the greatest physician of his time, got the resuscitation of a corpse using bellows, a trick that was pro...