author
Edward Perry Vollum
d. 1902
A U.S. Army surgeon, early photographer, and curious medical writer, he is best remembered for co-authoring a striking 1896 study on the fear of being buried alive. His life ranged from frontier military service to late-19th-century debates about how death should be diagnosed.
1 Audiobook
Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented
by William Tebb, Edward Perry Vollum
About the author
Born in New York in 1827 and dying in Munich in 1902, Edward Perry Vollum served as a surgeon in the U.S. Army and later held the rank of lieutenant colonel as a medical inspector. Records of his career place him at posts in Texas, the Oregon Territory, and California before and during the Civil War era.
Vollum also has a small place in photographic history. Historical collections in Oregon credit him with making photographs in the 1850s while stationed at Fort Umpqua and attribute to him some of the earliest military and frontier images from that region.
As an author, he is most closely associated with Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented, written with William Tebb and published in 1896. The book reflects his medical background and his interest in the uneasy boundary between apparent death and real death, a subject that clearly fascinated many readers of his time.