12. Inserting a Heart Flag
In a scene reminiscent of Mia Wallace’s resurrection in Pulp Fiction, one popular German method of death testing was jamming a long needle with a flag on one end into the hearts of the recently deceased. Unlike Mrs. Wallace’s iconic uttered “something,” corpses, in this case, wouldn’t say anything at all, instead the flag would reportedly unfurl and wave if the heart was still beating, at least according to the test’s inventor, German physician Middeldorph. It isn’t entirely clear how Middeldorph thought the mechanical beating of a heart would unfurl a flag attached to a dull needle, but regardless the test was put into practice and used in the latter half of the 19th century.
There is well documented 19th-century evidence of this test actually being used in at least one case. In 1893, a physician named Séverin Icard used the heart flag on a young woman whose parents were convinced she was about to be buried alive. Icard implanted the heart flag, which did not unfurl and wave, as proof that she was dead and her parents had nothing to fear. Instead of listening to reason, they accused Icard of murdering their daughter with the very same heart flag and caused a scandal in the press.