CHAPTER I.VARIOUS WAYS OF REGARDING DEATH.
Different meanings of the word death—Physiological distinction between elementary and general death—Non-scientific opinions—The ordinary point of view—Medical point of view.—The signs of death are prognostic signs.
Different Meanings of the Word Death.—An English philosopher has asserted that the word we translate by “cause” has no less than sixty-four different meanings in Plato and forty-eight in Aristotle. The word “death” has not so many meanings in modern languages, but still it has many. Sometimes it indicates an action which is taking place, the action of dying, and sometimes a state, the state which succeeds the action of dying. The phenomena it connotes are in the eyes of many biologists quite different, according as we watch them in an animal of complex organization, or on the other hand, in monocellular beings, protozoa and protophytes.
Physiological Distinction between Elementary Death and General Death.—We distinguish the death of the anatomical elements,elementary death, from the death of the individual regarded as a whole,general death. Hence we recognize anapparent death, which is an incomplete and temporary suspension of the phenomena of vitality, and areal death, which is a final and total arrest of these phenomena. Whenwe consider it in its essential nature (assumed, but not known) we look on it as thecontrary of life, as did the Encyclopædia, Cuvier, and Bichat; or we regard it with others either as the consequence of life, or simply as the end of life.
Non-scientific Opinions.—What is death to those outside the realm of science? First of all we find the consoling solution given by those who believe death to be the commencement of another life. We next find ourselves involved in a confused medley, an infinite diversity of philosophical doubt and superstition. “A leap into the unknown,” says one. “Dreamless and unconscious night,” says another. And again, “A sleep which knows no waking.” Or, with Horace, “the eternal exile,” or with Seneca, annihilation.Post mortem nihil; ipsaque mors nihil.
The idea which is constantly supervening in the midst of this conflict of opinion is that of thebreaking upof the elements, the union of which forms the living being. It has, as we shall see, a real foundation which may perhaps receive the support of science. We shall not find that the best way of defining death is to say that it consists of the “dissolution of the society formed by the anatomical elements, or again, in the dissolution of the consciousness that the individual possesses of himself—i.e., of the existence of this society.” It is the rupture of the social bond. The old idea of dispersion is a variant of the same notion. But the ancients evidently could not understand, as we do, the nature of these elements which are associated to form the living being, and which are liberated or dispersed by death. We, as biologists, can see microscopicalorganic unity with a real objective existence. The ancients were thinking of spiritual elements, of principles, of entities. To the Romans, who may be said to have held that there are three souls, death was produced by their separation from the body. The first, the breath, thespiritus, mounting towards celestial regions (astra petit); the second, theshade, regaining on the surface of the earth and wandering around the tombs; the third, themanes, descending to the lower regions. The belief of the Hindoos was slightly different. The body returned to the earth, the breath to the winds, the fire of the glance to the sun, and the ethereal soul to the world of the pure. Such were the ideas of mortal dispersion formed by ancient humanity.
Modern science takes a more objective point of view. It asks by what facts, by what observable events death is indicated. Generally speaking, we may say that these facts interrupt an interior state of things which was life and to which they put an end. Thus death is defined by life. It is the cessation of the events and of the phenomena which characterize life. We must, therefore, know what life is to understand the meaning of death. How wise was Confucius when he said to his disciple, Li-Kou:—“If we do not know life, how can we know death?” According to biology there are two kinds of death because there are two kinds of life; elementary life and death correspond just as general life and death do, and this is where scientific opinion diverges from commonly received opinion.
What cares the man who reasons as most human beings do, about this life of the anatomical elements of his body, the existence and the silent activity ofwhich are in no way revealed to him. What does their death matter to him? To him there is but one poignant question, that of being separated or not being separated from the society of his fellows. Death is no longer to feel, no longer to think; it is the assurance that one will never feel, one will never think again. Sleep, dreamless sleep, is already in our eyes a kind of transient death; but, when we fall asleep we are sure of waking again. There is no awaking from the sleep of death. But that is not all. Man knows that death, this dreamless sleep that knows no waking, will be followed by the dissolution of his body. And what a dissolution will there be for the body, the object of his continual care! Remember the description of Cuvier—the flesh that passes from green to blue and from blue to black, the part which flows away in putrid venom, the other part which evaporates in foul emanations, and finally, the few ashes that remain, the tiny pinch of minerals, saline or earthy, which are all that is left of that once animated masterpiece.
The Popular View.—To the man afraid of death it seems, in the presence of so great a catastrophe, that the patient analysis of the physiologist scrupulously noting the succession of phenomena and explaining their sequence is uninteresting. He will only attach the slightest importance to knowing that vestiges of vitality remain in this or that part of his body, if they do not re-establish in every part thestatus quo ante. He cares not to hear that a certain time after the formal declaration of his death his nails and his hair will continue to grow, that his muscles will still have the useless faculty of contraction, that every organ, every tissue, every element,will oppose a more or less prolonged resistance to the invasion of death.
Medical View.—It is, however, these very facts and details, this why and wherefore, which interest the physiologist. The state of mind of the doctor in this respect, again, is different. When, for instance, the doctor declares that such and such a person is dead, he is really making not so much a statement of fact as a prediction. How many elements are still living and will be capable of new birth in this corpse that he has before his eyes? That is not what he asks himself, nor is it what we should ask of him. He knows, besides, that all these partial survivals will be extinguished and will never find the conditions necessary to reviviscence, and that the organization will never be restored to its primal activity; and this is what he affirms. The fear of premature burial which haunts so many imaginations is the fear of an error in the prediction. It is to avoid this that practical medicine has devoted so much of its attention to the discovery of acertain—and early—sign of death. By this we understand the discovery of acertain prognostic sign of general death. We want a prognostic sign enabling us to assert that the life of the brain is now extinguished and will never be reanimated. And yet there are in that organism many elements which are still alive. Many others even may be born anew if we could give them suitable conditions which they no longer meet with in the animal machine now thrown out of gear. What finer example could we give than the experiment of Kuliabko, the Russian physiologist, who kept a man’s heart working and beating for eighteen hours after the official verification of his death.