In the United States, the development of embalming as a standard practice following the Civil War — where the need to preserve bodies for transport and the public display of prominent casualties had made embalming widespread — provided an additional safeguard against premature burial, though not always an intentional one.

Embalming, properly performed, is definitionally incompatible with survival.

By 1915, when the alleged events of the Dunbar burial took place, the medical establishment had substantially more confidence in its ability to diagnose death than it had had a century earlier.

But in rural South Carolina, access to the full range of medical resources and expertise was uneven.

A country doctor in Blackville in 1915 was practicing in very different conditions from a physician at a major urban hospital.

And for the Black community of Blackville, access to medical care was further constrained by the segregation system that limited what services were available and under what conditions.