The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1873-07-04
Death Never Instantaneous.

does not die all at once that one or
more members live, and one or more
functions retain their vitality after all
apparent life is gone" the Cincinnati
Gazette says +: 1t seems at first sight
that death intervenes as soon as the
heart ceases to beat, because the circu-
lation being thereby arrested, it is i'm
possible to keep up a supply of nutri-
ton to the several organs. But modern
researches have shown that this is very
far from being actually the case.
There are hundreds of nervous energies
which retain ceatain living activity
long after the heart has lost it's own
proper vitality. It has been conclu-
sively proved that the hair and nails
have IN many cases grown long after
death, and Spallazani has added yet
more important fact. He fed a crow,
immediately killed it, and placed it in
temperature equal to that of the body
OF the bird when alive. Six hours af-
terward he opened its stomach, and
the food had been thoroughly digested.
Another physician, M. Robin, French
man, experimental upon victim of the
guillotine, and found that the heart
continued to beat for nearly an hour
after the loss of the head, and that the
removal of the liver, the stomach, and
the intestines had no apparent effect in
, destroying its action. In 1853, M.
Brown Sequard, one of the ablest phs-
biologists of the day, carried this ex-
pertinent yet further He carefully de-
capitated a dog, and ten minutes after
ward applied the galvanic current to
the heat. No movement was percepti-
BILE. He then placed to the four arte-
ries found at the section of the neck,
clyster pipes communicating by tubes
with a reservoir of fresh oxygenated
blood, and observed the penetration of
this blood into the vessels of the head.
At once there were irregular movements
in the eyes and the muscles of the face,
regular contractions apparently direc-
ted by the will succeed, and for a
quarter of an hour, during which the
injection of the blood in the cerebral
arteries was continued, the head to all
outward semblance was restored to life.
The tubes were then removed, motion
ceased with an organized shudder, and
death ensued. The question was at
once asked whether such a resurrection
were not applicable to man also, and
Mr.. Robin entreated M. BrOwn-Se-
guard to make the attempt. So con-
vinced was he, however, that the func-
tions of life were thoroughly restored
by the process, that he refused to ex-
pertinent upon the head of any man ex-
ecuted after the French mode, upon the
ground that he could not consent to be
a party to the fortunes either head or
trunk would undergo when by this
means temporarily restored to life.
Another Psychologist, NJ. Paul Bert,
has pursued the same train of investiga-
ton by another method. Reas-
oning from Brown Sequard
and Robins experiment, and up
on the well-known fact that after appa-
rent death the muscles became rigid by
degrees only, first those of the jaw
bone, then of the abdomen, then of the
neck, then of the breast, and convinced
that organic death is matter of more
prolonged graduation than is generally
believed, he cut off the tails of two old
rats and grated them, one upon the
head and one upon the back of two
others. The tails speedily united with
the new organism, and became as full of
life as when attached to the body of
their first pOssessor. M. Bert intends
again to cut off these tails when they
grow old again to engraft them and as
certain whether life thereby cannot be
indefinitely prolonged. We are not
physicians, but it certainly would seem
feasible if such experiments are success
full in the case of the higher animals,
upon whom they will certainly be tried,
to remove an arm or leg from man
recently dead and grated them upon a
one-armed or one-legged veteran from
the wars as a better substitute for the
limb he has lost than any which the
skill of man or art can make. Almost
every one has heard of the attempts to
restore animation by the electric battery
made from time to time since Aldini
first tried it at Boulogne, in 1902, and
every Psychologist will recollect the IA
nous case in Glasgow, when, an hour
after execution by hanging, rage, hor-
ror, despair, agony and terror were
distinctly seen portrayed upon the coun-
tenance of the dead when submitted to
the battery. But by this means no man
has hitherto been restored permanently
to life. The French Academy of
Sciences, in 1848, though it, however,
of such Importance that they refused to
recognize the cessation of the action of
the heart as a conclusive proof of or
ganic death, and considered it estab-
hshed only by the setting in of putre-
faction or muscular immobility under
the battery.