Silvith Concept & Design

These are some examples from a book. It’s about 19th century ways to determine if someone is really deceased.

–Christian Friedrich Nasse’s Thanatometer was a long thermometer that was inserted into the stomach, supposedly measuring a core body temperature that would determine if life was possible (and published in 1841);

–The (Englishman’s) Barnett scalding death cure, which recommended burning the skin of the arm to see if it blistered (no blister/no life);

–the German Middeldorph invented a heart flag, a needle device that would be thrust into the heart, which if functioning would trigger something or other that would cause a flag to be released at the top of the needle (I can’t stop laughing at this one);

–Christian August Struwe’s interesting Lebenspruefer (1805) was an electrical device that delivered a dual shock to the eye and lip, the logic here being that if the person was still alive that there would be a resulting twitch;

–the nameless tobacco enema, which blew smoke…(delivered in the beginning by breath through a tube and improved later to replacing the lips with a bellows, this secondary improvement by Antoine Louis2 and furthered by Dr. P.J.B. Previnaire’s much more powerful anal tobacco furnace (This is a nice invention for my Eberron artificer). )

–Leon Collongues believed that he could hear the capillary functions of a possibly-dead person’s fingers if placed in his ear;

–Jules Antoine Josat3 invented a nipple-pincher (”pince-mamelon”) life-rejuvenation device, operating on the assumption that a deeply sedated person could not resist a strong pinch of the nipple and would have to wake up if alive.

I love that century! But I’m really grateful I was born in this time, because although the ideas are brilliant, they are also often very sinister.

For more information – and very interesting articles in general – go here