posted September 18, 2007 02:00 AM         

A Venezuelan man who had been declared dead woke up in the morgue in excruciating pain after medical examiners began their autopsy.

Carlos Camejo, 33, was declared dead after a highway accident and taken to the morgue, where examiners began an autopsy only to realize something was amiss when he started bleeding. They quickly sought to stitch up the incision on his face.

"I woke up because the pain was unbearable," Camejo said, according to a report on Friday in leading local newspaper El Universal.

His grieving wife turned up at the morgue to identify her husband's body only to find him moved into a corridor -- and alive.

Reuters could not immediately reach hospital officials to confirm the events. But Camejo showed the newspaper his facial scar and a document ordering the autopsy.

Carlos Camejo, a Venezuelan man who had been declared dead but woke up in the morgue in excruciating pain after medical examiners began their autopsy, shows a document ordering the autopsy in La Victoria September 17, 2007.
Resource

posted September 18, 2007 08:39 PM         

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It's like all those stories where they've broken up coffins after several years, and found marks from nails scratching the top from people desperately having tried to get out.

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posted September 18, 2007 09:51 PM         

US Patent No. 81,437
Issued: August 25, 1868

Inventor: Franz Vester, Newark NJ

"The nature of this invention consists in placing on the lid of the coffin, and directly over the face of the body laid therein, a square tube, which extends from the coffin up through and over the surface of the grave, said tube containing a ladder and a cord, one end of said cord being placed in the hand of the person laid in the coffin, and the other end of said cord being attached to a bell on the top of the square tube, so that, should a person be interred ere life is extinct, he can, on recovery to consciousness, ascend from the grave and the coffin by the ladder; or, if not able to ascend by said ladder, ring the bell, thereby giving an alarm, and thus save himself from premature burial and death; and if, on inspection, life is extinct, the tube is withdrawn, the sliding door closed, and the tube used for a similar purpose. . . "
Historical Note:

This patent, one of literally dozens on coffins with escape hatches and/or signaling means, may seem odd to twenty-first century eyes, but it reflects more a change in the world than latent insanity on the part of our mid- to late-eighteenth century ancestors.

One reads in many 18th century sources of the exhumed corpses with hair and nails grown long, the fingernail scratches in the coffin lid, etc., but there are few reliably documented cases of live burial. While the reports of live burials are suspect, the fear of burial alive was very real. When the Industrial Revolution was new there were no reliable methods for determining death. At the same time, new methods of putting people in comas (electricity, chemicals, industrial accidents from the new machinery and railroads, etc.) were multiplying.

The British inventor of the first signaling coffin became wealthy, but burned himself to death in order to avoid the possibility of being buried alive.

Although today's use of electronic machines makes determining death fairly certain, and the modern practice of embalming certainly ensures that one would be dead at that point, coffin alarms were still being patented as late as 1983 (U.S. Patent 4,367,461, "Coffin Alarm" issued to Fernand Gauchard, January 4, 1983). For a good sampling of these devices, go to the USPTO web site and search Class 27, subclass 31.

For an interesting discussion of these devices, see the novel "The Great Train Robbery" by Michael Crichton. The movie version, starring Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland, shows an alarm coffin in one sequence.

See also, "Burying the 'Buried Alive' Myth" web page from personalmd.com, based on an 1898 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association which points out that it was known in the 19th century that even if one manages to survive the processes employed pre-burial, there is so little air in a coffin that one would asphyxiate quickly, but there was still widespread fear of premature burial. The Urban Legends Reference Pages has a "Buried Alive" page with a good discussion on the "problem", fears and attempts to deal with them.

... and no, reasonable as it sounds at first, it appears clear that this device is not the source of the phrase "saved by the bell". That term's from boxing, and arose in the 1930's. See the Urban Legends Reference page "Life in the 1500's"
http://www.bpmlegal.com/wcoffin.html

posted September 19, 2007 01:12 AM         

did anyone else notice that guy looks pretty mad.

i sure the heck would be.
what a story to tell the grandkids, ehh?

posted September 20, 2007 09:39 PM         

A perfect toss in the game of horse shoes. The horse shoe hits and spins around post making a ringing sound. This is also called a dead ringer. http://www.socyberty.com/Folklore/Commonly-Used-Idioms-and-How-They-Came-to-be.41554

dead ringer
–noun Slang.
a person or thing that closely resembles another; ringer: That old car is a dead ringer for the one we used to own.
[Origin: 1890–95]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
WordNet -
dead ringer

noun
a person who is almost identical to another [syn: ringer]
WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dead%20ringer

posted September 21, 2007 08:10 PM         

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this is one of my greatest fear : to be buried alive/ wakeing up in my grave!

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posted September 22, 2007 10:22 AM         

I'm glad he's alright now.

posted September 22, 2007 03:36 PM         

example;There are many born blind that could benefit from a donation enabling them to see for the first time in thier life! Another may have been on dialisis for years near death due to any number of reasons and a kidney or liver replaced could mean the difference of life with thier children or not.

It does not cost anything for you to choose this as an option. It is most important that you express your desire to do this before you physically die though. It does'nt need to even be in a will. Just let your family members know of your wishes loud and clear. They ultimately will be signing the necessary papers when this time comes. It is an automatic option so to speak, many are just not very educated about it. At death it's often difficult to make this decision for another and more times than not we opt against it because we really don't know the wishes of our loved ones or are not educated about this subject.
I hope this helps?