284 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the cemetery, they take up the coffin, open it, and are met hy a horri- 

 ble sight. The miserable man had turned over in his coffin, the blood 

 gushing from the two opened veins had soaked the shroud ; his features 

 were frightfully contorted, and his convulsed limbs bore witness to the 

 cruel anguish that had preceded death. Most of the facts of this kind 

 are of rather remote date. The latest instances have happened in the 

 country, among an ignorant population, usually in neighborhoods where 

 no physician was called on to ascertain the decease, that is, to distin- 

 guish the cases of seeming death from those of true death. 



How, then, can we certainly know apparent from real death ? There 

 is a certain number of positive signs of death ; that is to say, signs 

 which, when absolutely discerned, leave no room for mistake. Yet some 

 physicians, and many people who know nothing of science, are still so 

 doubtful about the certainty of these signs as to wish that physiology 

 could detect others of a more positive character. A zealous philanthro- 

 pist, quite lately, gave a sum for a prize of twenty thousand francs to 

 the discoverer of an infallible sign of death. Doubtless, the intention is 

 excellent, but we are safe henceforward in regarding the sexton's work 

 without alarm ; the signs already known are clear enough to prevent 

 any mistake, and to make the fatal risk of premature burial impossible. 



We must point out, in the first place, the immediate signs of death. 

 The first, and the most decisive, is the absolute stoppage of the heart's 

 pulsations, noted for a duration of at least five minutes, not by the 

 touch, but by the ear. " Death is certain," says the reporter of the 

 commission named in 1848, by the Academy of Sciences, to award the 

 prize of competition as to the signs of true death, " when positive ces- 

 sation of pulsations of the heart in the subject has been ascertained, 

 which is immediately followed, if it has not been preceded, by cessa- 

 tion of respiration, and of the functions of sensation and motion." The 

 remote signs equally deserve attention. Of these, three are recognized : 

 corpse-like rigidity, resistance to the action of galvanic currents, and 

 putrefaction. As we have already seen, rigidity does not begin till 

 several hours after death, while general and complete disappearance 

 of muscular contractility, under the stimulus of currents, and, last of 

 all, putrefaction, are only manifest at a still later period. These remote 

 signs, particularly the last, have this advantage, that they may be 

 ascertained by those unacquainted with medicine, and it is very well 

 to pay some attention to them in countries where physicians are not 

 charged with the verification of the disease, but they are of no impor- 

 tance wherever there are doctors to examine the heart with instruments, 

 and to decide promptly and surely upon the death, from the complete 

 stoppage of pulsation in that organ. At the beginning of the century, 

 Hufeland, and several other physicians, convinced that all the signs of 

 death then known were uncertain, except putrefaction, proposed and 

 obtained, in Germany, the establishment of a certain number of mor- 

 tuary houses, intended to receive, and keep for some time, the bodies 



