Many scary thoughts come to mind during Halloween concerning both some probable and some far-fetched medical risks, and there is a surprising amount of scientific and scholarly information concerning their likelihood and outcomes.
Could You Conceivably Be Buried Alive?
The short answer is yes, but it would require a fairly long chain of unlikely events to occur. Most of the literature has been summarized in a morbidly intriguing study by Prof. Jan Bondeson of the Medical School at Cardiff University in Wales, entitled Buried alive: The terrifying history of our most primal fear (Norton, 2001).
First, you would have to have been incorrectly pronounced dead. This does happen, most often when a physician is rushed for time, and, yes, there have been cases when people have awakened to find themselves in body bags.
Most of these have not been healthy adults or children, so much as the gravely ill elderly. Unfortunately, most who are revived tend to die (for good this time) rather shortly thereafter of the same underlying condition that seemed to have “killed them” in the first place.
This fear of somehow surviving consciously with no one noticing that you are in fact, alive, and with you suffering long enough to be actually put under the ground or otherwise disposed of, should nonetheless be assuaged by the fact that you are unlikely to survive either the embalming process, or cremation, consciously or otherwise.
There have been a variety of 19th century solutions to the “Is he really dead” dilemma. In Germany, there were specialized chapels of suites of rooms, where bodies were stored until they stank.
Beginning to rot, was apparently as convincing a sign that you were dead as any.
Other strategies included various sound producing devices with bells or even buzzers tied to the hands of the deceased, even as that person lay in the coffin, which could be activated by the presumptively dead, upon their awakening and surprised by their new rather tightly confined quarters.
These schemes relied a great deal on having alert cemetery or church yard watchmen on duty, presumably to dig you up.
There appears to be no case where this scheme has worked, either because the signaling device failed or the sentinel was off at a pub, instead of awaiting the deceased’s signaling.
Being Attacked By A Vampire
This, it turns out, is rather much more likely, if one includes in the definition of vampire, those animals which feed on blood. In a brand new book, Dark banquet: Blood and the curious lives of blood-feeding creatures by Bill Schutt, a faculty member at the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University, who is also affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, catalogs the intertwined lives of a wide variety of animals who bite or cut and feast on the blood of their victims.
While there are some rather exotic locales involved with many of these creatures (vampire bats are largely denizens of tropical Latin America, tiny blood-thirsty catfish that allegedly can swim up a man’s penis share waters with piranhas , vampire finch birds live on the Galapagos islands) some blood suckers are rather common in the northern hemisphere..
These include female mosquitos, chiggers, bedbugs and ticks. In virtually all known cases, it is not the blood loss that is to be feared as the infection with microbes (viruses, bacteria, or even other parasites, such as the malaria plasmodia) that tends to come along for the ride.
Fortunately, with the serious exception of Lyme disease, and similar tick-borne spirochete infections, and the intermittent viral encephalitis outbreaks, most of what happens by way of blood-letting in well-drained areas of largely urban and suburban North America, is at the nuisance level, and scarcely deserves the plot line of a bad horror movie.
Fairly short term and sometimes over-the-counter medical treatment and the employment of an economic entomologist (now called an urban entomologist for bedbugs and cockroaches ) will manage the situation without garlic or the use of a wooden stake through the heart.
Poisoned Halloween Candy or Candy with Pins, Razor Blades, etc.
The dilemma here historically has NOT been that you would have been poisoned especially on Halloween, as much as the fact that historically, candy and other foodstuffs have been adulterated, with sweetness being a particularly sought after quality.
Food aulteration has been in the news quite frequently of late. The intent of the most notorious current case was not to increase the sensation of sweetness bur rather to falsely indicate higher protein levels than were actually present. This was done by adulteration with the chemical melamine in many pet food products that used ingredients from China (and more recently occured in powdered milk and infant formula). It was extensively discussed in a recent blog on the work of Marion Nestle, in her book Pet food politics: The chihuahua in the coal mine (University of California Press, 2008).
But there is now another excellent book, and this one with greater historical scope, that would make a good companion read with Nestle’s book (but also could stand alone rather well) Bee Wilson’s Swindled: The dark history of food fraud, from poisoned candy to counterfeit coffee. (Princeton University Press, 2008).
It tells the very long story of recurring attempts to cut corners, save producers money, or gain a short-sighted marketing advantage through using additives that were flat-out poisons. Although it does not dwell solely on candy, it does make for some truly scary reading.
What about the stories of pins and razor blades in candy or in fruit passed out to trick-or-treaters?
These are sadly true, but only in very rare cases.
In cities where hospital offered to x-ray trick-or-treat sacks, with hundreds of films taken in dozens of cities, there has been detection of virtually no dangerous radio-opaque materials.
The bigger risk to the costumed children, it turns out, was from car accidents in hospital parking lots and falls in the corridors.
What are the Real Risks, If Any of Halloween?
· Collisions of cars with trick-or-treaters is by far the most serious worry.
· Bonfire burns, arson, and fireworks.
· A tendency for teenagers and college students to get drunk. (Halloween is similar in rates of campus drunkenness to football homecoming days….very high)
Getting hit in the eye with a thrown egg is a surprisingly frequent Halloween occurence with potential for real damage. Eggs are aerodynamically suited to attain high speed when thrown, and can impact the eyeball with great force, and more importantly, violently shattered eggshells have sharp and cutting edges.
· Laxative effects of some legitimate additives to candy, most commonly sorbitol.
· Unexpected nut allergies.
· Simple over-indulgence resulting in nausea.
That’s pretty much it.
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