The Alaska citizen., 1913-04-14
The Line Drawn Between
Life and Death is Some
thing Not Understood

\ dispatch from Paris pr nted no
| long aso. told OF the wonderful
feat of a professional swimmer Wht
! remained under water no less thar
five minutes and twenty-six Sc
lconds in the meanwhile swimming
thirty yards. though totally Immersed
all the time and unable 10 take any
fresh air INTO his lunes. If he hal
remained under water a few second.
! longer. 10 doubt he would have
been drowned \ drowned man. a.
far as we can see, and as far rs hC
is personally concerned, is = deai
man; and yet there is little question
that, if this swimmer had thus
persisted. he could by modern method.
have been revived. and would thus
apparently have been brought bach
from death TO life Many drowne5
persons have thus been restored after
all consciousness had departed from
them
The explanation usually gwen. s7ss
Garrett p Seryiss. is that in such
cases it is not real death, but "aus =
pended animation" with which We
are dealing The bodily machine
has stopped like an eng ne stuck
on the center" and by clearing Tie
ohstructed passage, imparting artifi-
cial movement 20 the muscles of the
chest and introducing air into the
lungs. the machinery is set 80 ne
again The heart resumes its beat
ing and the man RECEIVERS conscious
ness as the blood begins once more
0 flow through his arteries.
And yet the fact remains that, as
far as we can determine, suspended
animation for the victim himself, is
equivalent to death and if it is
allowed to pass into what We call
real death there is nothing in his
experience to Indicate any further
change AS a personality he suffered
death when his consciousness de
parted A kind of separated life
remains for time in the different
organs of the body, but it is not
the thing which we, as conscious
Neirgs. know as life.
There are other ways in which
apparent death"-that is death as
far as the individuals consciousness
is concerned-may be produced. Il
sometimes happens, for instance, n
various forms of trance. In perfect
consciousness is completely arrested
If the sleeper should or could remain
in that state for a thousand or a mil
lion years, it would be all the same
TO him. Yet in sleep the appearance
of death is not produced for those
Who look upon the sleeper. They
see thaat he continues to breathe and
that his heart goes on beating. while
the circulation Of the blood though
it may be changed or slowed down, is
not arrested. Something occurs that
fcuts off the connections of the ner-
vous system, or the brain and con
seriousness departs.
When the man is profoundly asleep
tata &c ICl ,Ati I'M
as in drowning, are the parts of his
body which still retain a kind of life
separately conscious of that life? We
have no reason to suppose that they
are, but, on the other hand, We have
no means of proving that they are
not. If such consciousness exists
! it has no apparent relaxation TO the
consciousness of the whole indiyid-
ual, which assures him that he is
| living He has that consciousness
only when his entire system IS work
ng together, and in such way
as to stimulate the activity of his
BRAIN
Some very interesting experiments
have been tried recently, with sus-
pended animation. At Moscow Pro,
fessor Bakhmetieff played boldly with
the life of many animals and insects
by freezing them.
Butterflies thus frozen, so that
all their bodily fluids were turned to
ice, and all Their vital actions ceased
could be restored to life at any time
provided that the general bodily