author
Edward Perry Vollum
d. 1902
Best remembered for co-authoring a late Victorian study of premature burial, this U.S. Army surgeon brought a physician’s eye and a reformer’s urgency to a subject that deeply unsettled the public.
1 Audiobook
Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented
by William Tebb, Edward Perry Vollum
About the author
Edward Perry Vollum was an American army doctor and medical officer who died in 1902. Library and archival records identify him as a U.S. Army surgeon, and his surviving papers place him in military service in Texas and elsewhere in the 19th century.
He is most closely associated with Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented, written with William Tebb. The book examines trance, catalepsy, suspended animation, and the risk of mistaken declarations of death, turning a fear common in the late 1800s into a detailed medical and social argument.
Vollum also appears in historical collections connected with early photography and medical archives, suggesting a life that reached beyond one unusual book. Confirmed biographical details are limited, but the record that remains shows a physician whose name is still linked to one of the era’s most striking medical controversies.