The Strange Story Of Essie Dunbar, The Woman Who Was Allegedly Buried Alive In 1915
The quality and thoroughness of medical examination in this context was variable.
The specific claim in the Dunbar story — that a physician examined a patient and found “no signs of life” — is a claim that invites scrutiny of what examination was actually performed.
In the best medical practice of 1915, finding no signs of life would have involved thorough auscultation of the chest with a stethoscope, careful palpation of the pulse at multiple sites, assessment of pupillary response, and possibly assessment of response to painful stimuli.
Under rushed conditions, or with the unconscious biases that shaped how physicians in the Jim Crow South sometimes treated Black patients, the examination might have been less thorough.
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