Banishing death: the disappearance of the appreciation of mortality.
The experience of death and dying is very different in the 21st century than it was in the 19th. A number of societal changes in the latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries served to remove contact with the dying and the dead from everyday experience. This article examines four of these changes: 1) falling death rates, 2) the rise of hospitals, 3) the rise of funeral directing as a profession, and 4) the rural cemetery movement. It is proposed that these changes produced an unjustified optimism with regard to the prolongation of life.
Lundgren
Burden S
BS
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia 23517, USA. blundgre@odu.edu
Houseman
Clare A
CA
D001293:Attitude to Death; D006117:Grief; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D017051:Hospice Care / Q000266:history / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D008136:Longevity; D009026:Mortality / Q000639:trends*; D011157:Population Dynamics