The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1876-11-30
Sensations When Dying.

The popular ideas relative to the suffer.
ings of persons on the point of death are
undoubtedly to certain extent erroneous.
The appearance of extreme agony which
is often presented under these circum.
stances is due to mere muscular agitation,
Independent of any extraordinary sensi-
bility of the nerves of feeling. Those
who die a natural death in the very last
stages of existence are scarcely conscious
of bodily sutfering-not more than they
frequently are to the attentions and solicit
tude of friends.
Those who die by violence or accident
undoubtedly experience degree of pain
proportionate to the extent of the bodily
mutilation. Hanging is doubtless an I'M
pleasant mode Of death; but few, after
all, shuttle off this mortal coil' more
easily than those who are suspended by
the neck. 1t is akin to drowning in
this respect. The blood Immediately
seeks the head and soon deprives it of all
consciousness. The efforts to inhale the
air, which are kept up for sometime after
the cord isattached, and which causes such
violent movements of the chest and ex-
tremities, arise from the influence of the
spinal marrow, whose sensibility is not so
soon destroyed by the congestion of blood
as fefs6hs f %h6b 1f s by decap1taton
probably suffer more, though their pain is
only momentary; this is the case with
those who blow out their brains. The
sensation produced by ball passing
through the body would be difficult to de-
scribe by one who has never experienced
it, but it is something singular in this
case that those who are shot, although the
"leaden messenger of death may not
have penetrated any essentially vital Or
gan, Immediately fall to the earth, ap-
parently under an irresistible feeling of
their approaching return to dust, exclaim-
ing, as it were, involuntarily, :" am a
dead mann'
A dagger wound in the heart, for the
few moments which are consummated in
the ebbing of life, must occasion unut-
terable feelings Of agony, Independent of
the mere sensations of pain in the parts
sundered by the entrance of the blade.
The rushing out of the blood, at each con-
vulsive pulsation of the heart, must seem
like the actual spectacles of the flow of life.
Those who are crushed to death may
not expire instantly, unless tie Uranium
happens to be involved in the casualty.
Where the skull is not fractured there is
probably an uncomfortable agony for few
seconds-a flashing thought of home,
friends and family, and all is over. Those
who are cut into by heavily
railroad carriage, must experience some
similar sensations.
If the neck is broken low down the per-
son does not necessarily die on the in
slant. His situation is the most distress
ing of any which can be imagined. He
NAV live and have a being for DAYS: hut
he cannot move. His face may express
all the passions, feelings and emotions;
but beyond the motions of his breast and
countenarce his energies do not 60. His
arms are pinioned at his side; his legs are
lifeless, and he essentially beholds his
body in the grave, while he is yet in full
turbance of his position is liable to launch
him at once into eternity.
In taking laudauum person exists in
a state of insensibility for length of
time, melancholy spectacle to his
friends. In poisoning from arsenic
great amount of suffering is undergone
The sensibility of the stomach is exceed
ingly acute when inflamed, and the effect
of arsenic is to produce fatal iudamma-
ton of the discus. Prussic acid is rapid,
and acts by paralyzing the brain.
In rejecting on the horrors which death
presents under these different aspects of
violence the mind becomes overcome with
disgust. We cannot do better than turn
to the contemplation of its features in the
milder course of disease, where, if the
mind be at ease, the final exit is made
without any of those revolving exhibitions
OF bodily sutfering.-Neao Hauen Rsgister.