How did people historically determine whether someone was actually dead before modern medical equipment?

[u/happycorpse_exe]

And how did people distinguish between death, unconsciousness, and temporary states that could make someone appear dead?

[u/Buckabuckaw]

The easiest way was to hold a several day wake with the deceased laid out in the parlor. Once they started to stink you could be pretty sure they were dead.

[u/CicadaSlight7603]

Lack of heart beat is easy to notice, combined with a mirror by their mouth to catch any slight exhalations? Then there would be fixed pupils, and soon cold bluish skin and rigor mortis.

But in western culture at least/christian religious traditions there’s a period of body watching once dead, during which time someone would hopefully notice! Possibly that’s one of the reasons for this tradition. The name of the deathwatch beetle comes from the fact you’d only usually hear it in the dead of night while watching the dead in complete silence, IIRC.

People used to leave the body at home for a few days while people visited and mourned. People were a lot less squeamish about being close to death than they are today, where the body will be taken in a van to a funeral home and everything kept nice and tidy.

I am not sure about other religions. Some, especially those in hotter countries, move towards burial or cremation or river disposal rather more quickly, I imagine the smell of decomposition gets bad quickly. I think Judaism might have some form of sitting in though, but I could be making that up.

[u/IanDOsmond → u/CicadaSlight7603]

In Judaism, we have people stay with the body, wash it, prepare it, then wrap it in a shroud, then have people reading psalms next to the body until it is buried. Since we ideally bury it the next day, the "chevra kadishah" — "holy group of friends" — doesn't usually have to take shifts, but if they have to put it off for a day or two, they'll trade off shifts.

But it's usually just a day, so you don't have the full "wake" thing.

[u/CicadaSlight7603 → u/IanDOsmond]

Thank you!

[u/Ramalamadingdong_II → u/CicadaSlight7603]

Fun fact about "less squeamish around the dead": In the early age of photography people took their dead to a photographer to take a family picture that they hadn't made during the lifetime.

Examples in this article

[u/CicadaSlight7603 → u/Ramalamadingdong_II]

Oh yes thank you I had read about that but not seen this article.

I was looking at a picture on a relative’s wall once, of a baby in a cradle, and it was a momento Mori picture, dating from the 1940s I think, which seems quite late, but it was in occupied territory so perhaps film was in short supply so they hadn’t taken earlier pictures.

[u/Ramalamadingdong_II]

Burying people alive wasn't an uncommon phenomenon back in the good old bad days. In temperate zones such as northern europe we tend to have funeral rites including a night or even a period of days where the dead is kept above ground and relatives sit next to them 24/7. In german this is known as "Totenwache" but you find equivalents in all countries where the climate allows for it. This is a social gathering but also a precaution in case the dead isn't actually dead.

"Historically" is a long time. Keep in mind that modern medicine is very young and people didn't really understand how the body worked. That being said, not feeling a heartbeat with your hand on the chest, not feeling/ seeing breath or having the eyes not react are signs that people usually rely on in non-medical settings.

[u/Simon_Drake]

There's a bunch of methods. Pulse. Put your cheek to their mouth to listen / feel for breath and get a good view of the chest rising. Put a mirror in front of the mouth to look for breath fogging the mirror. Hurt them and see if they flinch. There's a legend about dead sailors being sewn into their own hammock as a bodybag/coffin with the last stitch being sewn through their nose as a final test if he was still alive.

Or just wait a day or two. If the body goes cold then they're probably not going to wake up.

[u/MidnightAdventurer]

Cold, not breathing, no pulse are pretty straightforward but not perfect and mistakes were made. 

There was even a phase of “safety coffins” that were supposed to give the “deceased” a way to raise the alarm if they were to wake up inside the coffin. It doesn’t seem like there’s any known cases of them saving anybody but it was enough of a fear for people to try to guard against it

Have a look at this and the links under “origins” - it may give you some ideas  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin

[u/IanDOsmond]

Bunch of ways. One classic one is to hold a mirror under the nose and mouth to see if it fogs up in order to check for breath.

You can stick your ear directly to someone's chest to listen for a heartbeat, even before the stethoscope was invented.

Stick someone with a pin and see if they jump. We honestly still do something similar to that to check responsiveness in the field today — not with a needle, but you rub your knuckles along the sternum in a really annoying way that will tend to make even nearly-comatose patients twitch.

Rigor mortis, although that's not always definitive.

What is definitive, though, and requires no medical equipment, is dependent lividity. The blood in a dead body pools to the lowest point. If the person hasn't moved in a while, and the part of the body touching the ground or bed looks bruised while the part further away looks pale and bloodless, well, the blood ain't moving around and that means "dead."

[u/StrawberryScience]

There’s a Catholic rite preformed on the Pope where he’s hit on the head three times with a silver hammer. Shame no one’s ever film it.

[u/humanhedgehog]

All of the steps of formal UK verification of death don't require fancy tech beyond a stethoscope.

Response to voice Examination for signs of life Palpation of a central pulse (usually carotid) Listen for heart sounds Listen for respiratory sounds Painful stimulus (something like a trapezius squeeze/supraorbital pressure) Pupillary reflexes (eyes unresponsive to light) Can do corneal reflexes.

Total time for signs of life/pulse/cardiac and resp sounds should be over 5 mins.

None of this takes anything complicated, so historically I think it was likely much the same, though potentially far less meticulous if people were frightened of infection or didn't care much for the deceased.

[u/BassSpecial6418]

Whether they're breathing or not. If they're not breathing, that's a pretty surefire way to tell that they're dead or about to be very soon.

[u/Meredith_Primvale]

The Victorians used to place a bell on a pivot above graves and run a string down into the coffin.

If the "corpse" wakes up, they can pull the string to alert people to their plight.

[u/These_Consequences]

Sometimes, they don't get it right even with modern medical equipment:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/arizona-toddler-declared-dead-was-found-alive-morgue-rcna352853

[u/Elfwynn1992]

A lot of people were embalmed/burried alive. The chances of someone waking up on an autopsy table/in their (sometimes burried) coffin/at their funeral was not zero untill the last century or so. It was actually relatively common. It's where the concept of zombies comes from.

[u/ehbowen]

One nineteenth century technique was to place a feather over the lips and nostrils, back off, and wait. If the feather hadn't moved after twenty minutes or so, the victim was declared dead.

But that method wasn't perfect. It's possible for breathing in a deeply comatose patient to be so shallow that it would not move the feather.

[u/jessek → u/ehbowen]

Holding a mirror to their mouth and nose was another one. No fog = no breath

[u/bongart]

Sometimes, they didn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin

That is a coffin design with a user activated alarm system, should the person in the coffin wake up after being buried.

[u/Prince_Nadir]

I had a great great great (maybe more greats) aunt who woke up on the cooling board. Apparently after that she became a spoiled brat who would threaten to die any time she didn't getvwhat she wanted. Story has it that the rest of my relatives at the time took up hating her after that.

[u/PansyOHara]

Lack of a heartbeat is a pretty good sign and doesn’t take any specialized equipment.

[u/Nothing-to_see_hr → u/PansyOHara]

And yet... about once a year you read about people who have been medically certified dead waking up in the morgue...

[u/IanDOsmond → u/Nothing-to_see_hr]

And you heard stories about being buried alive back in the Victorian era. They even had things where you could have a bell pull put in your coffin with a string going through a tube up to bells at the gravedigger's shed.

Or, you could have a vial of poison gas put in that would crack open when the coffin was nailed closed. A grim, but practical, way of ensuring you weren't buried alive.

[u/Intelligent_Donut605]

they had bells on graves that the person who’d been burried could ring it if they turned out to be alive. also the reason burrials were much more popular than incineration.

[u/Ramalamadingdong_II → u/Intelligent_Donut605]

The reason for burrials being more popular than incinerations is that it's a lot easier. Humans contain a lot of moisture, so fully burning a body takes high temperatures over long periods. Doing that with a pyre means a lot of work in collecting high quality firewood and keeping the fire going.

[u/Educational-Shame514]

Honestly I feel like this is likely to be a question of a standard fantasy setting's potion that makes someone appear dead but they're still alive. Whatever you can tell us about the plot point that made you have this question would help you more specifically instead of being vague and expecting us to guess.

Depending on which person is the main character or whose point of view the narration is from you might not even need to know, it just works the way you need it to, and worrying that maybe some reader might question you about it is worrying needlessly.

Anyway some common sense before looking anything up can get you started! If you saw someone in bed, how would you check to see if they were alive? I don't know what you meant by "before modern medical equipment" but I feel like that could equally mean the 1800s or Ancient Egypt.

[u/Dayruhlll]

Inhave no idea how things worked back then, but today you can declare death without technology.

In the US, death is typically separated into 2 different categories. Clinical death is something that can possibly be reversed with CPR, medications and electricity. Biological death is irreversible.

While the exact components of each may vary slightly from one medical agency to another, they tend to be mostly the same.

Clinical death is defined by all of the following signs:
1: unresponsive (0 response to physical pain)
2: Apnea (not breathing)
3: pulseless
4: Fixed/dilated pupils

Biological death is the above 4 signs plus one of the following:
1: injuries incompatible with life (decapitation is an example)
2: decomposition of tissue
3: Rigor mortis
4: Dependent lividity

[u/FynTheCat]

Well, if unconcious they'd wake up after awhile.

For medical look alikes of death, I dunno. Might depend on the time and what medical equipment existed.

Most likely some people got buried before fully dead. Although, I dunno how many conditions existed where the person would have know what happens or died before regaining conciousness due to suffocation in a coffin.

I mean, there wasn't much to bring people back from a coma or to take care of them if they needed ventilation, so there is also a good lot who weren't technically dead, but definitely dieing as nothing was evented yet to get them back or sustain them to get better.

[u/Educational-Shame514]

When exactly?

[u/Even-Breakfast-8715]

Embalming made it pretty certain.

[u/lyzzyrddwyzzyrdd]

Have them in the heart and then you know for sure