Manchester Democrat. [volume] (Manchester, Iowa) 1875-1930, 1911-10-04
y 2 HE mystery of life! wan

!:
- \.$St he q mystery SOIs sAAS. ~ WIZ
IS science ever solve that rid
53s die? Will 1t heed THE
n IA Sphinx" in Emerson's fam
I'M w. X GUS poem who babe the
<%aaV eager Questio ner behold
E6 himself. the answer and
.SsSs the question, too? lncred.
ible az It may seem, scientists are
even now doing that very thing In.
the near future you and I should be,
prepared to hear them announce most
slearnedly and sententiously the re.
discovery Of the human soul.
Here and there, in hospital labora-
tories widely scattered. men Of sci
ence are cropping into the mystery.
h Like the medieval scientists who
lived in dread Of the ban Of Mother
Church. they are mostly working
secretly and are not telling hair they
4 know. For science, that marvellous
machine Of modern progress, has It's
church, too, as It were; Its orth odoxy
and its heterodoxy; Its hierarchy Of
\ established rulers who accommodate
and set autos-da-fe for expounders of
heresies. III :5.5s q
So far the evidence these bold in
vestigators have unearthed Is chiefly
negative, yet neverth eless highly sig
snihcant. In the hrst place. one Of
them found that physical death is ac-
,companied by sudden loss Of bodily
weight varying from three quarters Of
an; ounce to nearly an ounce and
quarter. Some curious experiments
Of this kind were made by Dr.. Dun
can sMacD ougall, Of 5Haverhill. Mass.
His first subject was a man dying
OF tuberculosis. He selected a pa
tent dying from this disease because
4 % great an exhaust ion characterizes
its final stages that death occurs with
little or no muscular movement. With
a patient quiet, the beam OF. the scales
can be kept true and any loss occur
ring will be evidenced. 55.5
In this experiment the patient was
lying on bed arranged on light
framework which was built on very
delicately balanced platform scales.
He was under observation three hours
and forty minutes before death. He
lost weight slowly at the rate Of an
ounce an hour, due to the evaporation
" Of breath moisture and perspiratton.
Keenly the physician watched the
fading hours and minutes of the al
most spent life. And then-suddenly,
coincident with death-the beam end
I of the scales dropped with an audi
BILE stroke, hitting against the lower
bar and remaining there with no re-
bound! The scales registered an in.
slant loss OF three quarters OF an
ounce.
What had gone? It could not have
been evaporation Of sweat, he decided,
for that had slowly left the body at
4 the rate OF tiny fraction Of an ounce
minute, whereas the sudden loss at
death had been many times as great.
1t could not have been; further tests
satisfied the doctor. the air in the
lungs. DR.. MacDougall was startled at
i the weird phenomenon. Something
immaterial. yet evidently forceful and
Of weight, had departed with the life
I What in the world was It?
II The physician repeated his expert
ments In the last hours of various 9th.
q tuberculosis patients. Always at
the supreme moment the stroke OF the
beam came down with an audible re-
port, and each time the scales told
the loss Of about an ounce. Could
this thing that so suddenly departed
I be possibly viewed in its upward
hight
Seized with new hope, the expert
meuter devised q clear white light to
rest along the body Of the subject in
the dying hour. In other cases he
covered the bodies with the rainbow