WHAT IS DEATH ?
WHAT is death P Most people think and act as if it were the easiest thing in the world to answer this simple question. They seem to imagine that there is a clear and stable line between life and death, and that the crossing of this line is an unmistakable act. In truth the line between life and death is often very hard to draw, and unless the body has been crushed, hacked in pieces, or otherwise destroyed, it is exceedingly difficult to pronounce absolutely that death has taken place. There is practically no criterion of death except the destruction of the body by violent means or by extended putrefaction. Any other test breaks down, and can only be described scientifically as likely to denote death. In truth there is no scientific definition of death except the destruc- tion of the body—or, a condition in which animation is not present, which does not admit of reanimation, and which is followed by the destruction of the body. Try any of the so- called tests in the light of human experience, and they all break down. Let us take them in order. A person is not dead because he has ceased to breathe. There are hundreds of recorded cases where no sign of breath could be detected, and yet the patient has lived. Complete stoppage of the heart's action is, again, no criterion. The hearts of men supposed to be dead have given no sign to the trained ear and touch, and yet life has been present. It is the same with the blood. You may open a vein and find the blood congealed, and yet have been operating on a living subject. Reduction of the body's temperature, i.e.. " the chill of death," is also no test, nor is rigor mortis, the stiffening of the frame. Not even is putrefaction and decomposition an abso- lute sign. As is well known, portions of the human frame may mortify in the living. The red colour may have gone from the hand when held to a powerful light, galvanism may fail to produce a muscular reaction, and a bright steel blade may be plunged deep into the tissues and when withdrawn show no sign of oxidation, and yet death may not be present.
What is the lesson to be drawn from the extreme difficulty of pronouncing absolutely whether death has or has not actually taken place,—whether, that is, animation may be restored to the body, or whether reanimation is impossible ? The lesson, to our mind, is to observe the two old customs which long governed the treatment of the dead,—to watch the body till the burial took place, and not to bury till unmistakable signs of putrefaction had appeared. These customs have of late fallen into disfavour and disuse, but, as so often happens, ex- perience is beginning to show that they were based on reason, and not on sentiment or superstition,—were, in fact, more truly scientific than the usage that has superseded them.
An attempt to show that very great dangers exist from our neglect of basing the decision that death has taken place upon any symptom but the absolute one of putrefaction, has just been made in a very interesting book entitled " Premature Burial."• To do this a very great number of cases of premature burial have been collected and set forth in all their gruesome details. We are shown that these cases, in fact, occurred, because men are apt to count as signs of death signs which are not absolute signs, but may only indicate suspended animation. From this the writers argue, and as we think justly, that there should be a change in the law as regards death certifica- tion, and as to the treatment of bodies before interment. For ex ample, they advocate the establishment of public mortuaries where bodies could be kept without inconvenience or injury to health till the signs of death had become indisputable. We do not in the least desire to take a sensational view of the matter, or to suggest that people are very often buried alive. Still, the fact that burying alive does take place occasionally, and could be prevented. cannot be denied, and this is, we hold, sufficient argument for extra care. The accident of premature • Premature Burial and how it may be Prevented, with Specie/ Reference to Pearce, Catalepsy, and other Forma of Suspended Animation. By William Tebb. F.B.G.S., and Colonel B. P. Vellum, M.D. London : Swan sonasnaaasia and Co.
burial is of so awful a character that if it only happened once a year out of a million interments it would be worth troubling about. The struggle for air in the narrow coffin, if it only lasts five minutes, is an agony so extreme that no pre- cautions can be counted too minute to prevent it.
While mentioning the book just alluded to, we must not forget t3 notice that one of the writers, Colonel Vollum, was once himself "laid out for dead," and that the other, Mr. Tebb, had " a distressing experience in his own family" which drew his attention to the subject of the work. Perhaps the most horrible story in the whole book is the following :— " While in India, in the early part of this year (1696), Dr. Roger S. Chew, of Calcutta, who, having been laid out for dead, and narrowly escaped living sepulture, has had the best reasons for studying the subject, gave me particulars of the following case :—' Mary Norah Best, aged seventeen years, an adopted daughter of Mrs. C. A. Moore, née Chew, "died" of cholera, and was entombed in the Chew's vault in the old French cemetery, at Calcutta When Mary " died" she was put into a pine coffin, the lid of which was nailed, not screwed, down. In 1881, ten years or so later, the vault was unsealed to admit the body of Mrs. Moore's brother, J. A. A. Chew. On entering the vault, the undertaker's assistant and I found the lid of Mary's coffin on the floor, while the position of the skeleton (half in, half out of the coffin, and an ugly gash across the right parietal bone) plainly showed that after being entombed Mary awoke from her trance, struggled violently till she wrenched the lid off her coffin, when she either fainted away with the strain of the effort in bursting open her casket, and while falling forward over the edge of her coffin struck her head against the masonry shelf, and died almost immediately ; or, worse still—as surmised by some of her clothing which was found hanging over the edge of the coffin, and the position of her right hand, the fingers of which were bent and close to where her throat would have been had the flesh not rotted away—she recovered consciousness, fought for life, forced her coffin open, and sitting up in the pitchy darkness of the vault went mad with fright, tore her clothes off, tried to throttle her- self, and banged her head against the masonry shelf until she fell forward senseless and dead.' "
To this may be added the story of Dr. Chew's own escape from burial alive. We of course quote this story, like the others, solely on the authority of the work just mentioned, as we have no means of verifying the statements :—
" I died, as was supposed, on the 18th of January, 1874, and was laid out for burial, as the most careful examination failed to show the slightest traces of life. I had been in this state for twenty hours, and in another three hours would have been closed up for ever, when my eldest sister, who was leaning over the head of my coffin crying over me, declared she saw my lips move. The friends who had come to take their last look at me tried to persuade her it was only fancy, but as she persisted, Dr. Donaldson was sent for to convince her that I was really dead. For some unexplained reason he had me taken out of the coffin and examined very care- fully from head to foot. Noticing a peculiar, soft fluctuating swelling at the base of my neck, just where the clavicles meet the sternum, he went to his brougham, came back with his case of instruments, and, before any one could stop him or ask what he was going to do, laid open the tumour and plunged in a tracheotomy tube, when a quantity of pus escaped, and, releasing the pressure on the carotids and thyroid, was followed by a rush of blood and some movement on my part that startled the doctor. Restoratives were used, and I was slowly nursed back to life ; but the tracheotomy tube (I still carry the scar) was not finally re- moved till September, 1875."
Very weird is the story of the undertaker who tells how he very reluctantly consented to bury a young lady who lay in her coffin for seven days without showing any signs of decomposi. tion. He only consented in the end " on the assurance that the same conditions attended all the deaths which had previously occurred in the family." But catalepsy notoriously runs in families. It is, therefore, by no means impossible that burying alive had become a family custom. Among the many curious things with which this gruesome book abounds is the account of the Parsees who return from the Towers of Silence owing to a premature exposure. Such persons are shunned as neither dead nor alive, and occupy the position described in Mr. Kipling's awful story of the young Engi- neer officer who fell into the community of men who had ceased to be reckoned among the living, and yet were not dead. The Parsees also use a dog in their burial rites. Is this because dogs appear to have a power of recognising true from apparent death ? The following story is given on the authority of a medical correspondent :-
" In Austria, in 1870, a man seemed to be dead, and was placed in a coffin. After the usual three days of watching over the sup- posed corpse, the funeral was commenced ; and when the coffin was being carried out of the house, it was noticed that the dog which belonged to the supposed defunct became very cross, and manifested great eagerness toward the coffin, and could not be driven away. Finally, as the coffin was about to be placed in the hearse, the dog attacked the bearers so furiously that they dropped it on the ground ; and in the shock the lid was broken off, and the man inside awoke from his lethargic condition, and soon recovered his full consciousness. He was alive and well at last news of him. Dogs might possibly be of use in deciding doubtful cases, where their master was concerned."
Before we leave this strange and interesting subject we must find space for one more phase of it. The authors of the book from which we have derived these stories, in considering cases of suspended animation, deal with the self-induced apparent death of the Indian holy men, and tell the following strange narrative, which we will neither deny nor affirm, but set forth as at least very curious :—
" Mr. Chunder Sen, municipal secretary to the Maharajah of Jeypore, introduced the author, during his visit to India, March 8th, 1896, to a venerable and learned fakir, who was seated on a. couch Buddhist fashion, the feet turned towards the stomach, in the attitude of meditation, in a small but comfortable house near the entrance to the beautiful public gardens of that city. The fakir possesses the power of self-induced trance, which really amounts to a suspension of life, being indistinguishable from death. In the month of December, 1895, he passed into and re- mained in this condition for twenty days. On several occasions the experiment has been conducted under test conditions. In 1889, Dr. Hem Chunder Sen, of Delhi, and his brother, Mr. Chunder Sen, had the opportunity of examining the fakir while passing into a state of hibernation, and found that the pulse beat slower and slower until it ceased to beat at all. The stethoscope was applied to the heart by the doctor, who failed to detect the slightest motion. The fakir, covered with a white shroud, was placed in a small subterraneous cell built of masonry, measuring about 6 feet by 6 feet, of rotund structure. The door was. closed and locked, and the lock sealed with Dr. Sen's private seal and with that of Mr. Dhanna Tal, the magistrate of the city ; the flap door leading to the vault was also carefully fastened. At the expiration of thirty-three days the cell was opened, and the fakir was found just where he was placed, but with a deathlike• appearance, the limbs having become stiff as in rigor mortis He was brought from the vault, and the mouth was rubbed with honey and milk, and the body and joints massaged with oil In the evening, manifestations of life were exhibited, and the fakir was fed with a spoonful of milk. The next day he was given a little juice of pulses known as dal, and in three days he was able• to eat bread and milk, his normal diet. These cases are well known both at Delhi and at Jeypore, and the facts have never been disputed. The fakir is a Sanscrit scholar, and is said to be endowed with much wisdom, and is consulted by those who are. interested in Hindu learning and religion."
Another Indian case is mentioned which was observed by Sir CharlesWade when agent at the Court of Runjeet Singh, and a third by an Anglo-Indian friend of Mr. Braid, a doctor who. wrote a book on human hibernation.
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