326 NATURE AND LIFE. 



" when positive cessation of pulsations of the heart in the 

 subject has been ascertained, which is immediately followed, 

 if it has not been preceded, by cessation of respiration and 

 of the functions of sensation and motion." The remote 

 signs equally deserve attention. Of these, three are recog- 

 nized : corpse-like rigidity, resistance to the action of gal- 

 vanic currents, and putrefaction. As we have already seen, 

 rigidity does not begin till several hours after death, while 

 general and complete disappearance of muscular contrac- 

 tility, under the stimulus of currents, and, last of all, pu- 

 trefaction, 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 importance 

 wherever there are doctors to examine the heart with in- 

 struments, 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 mortuary houses, intended to receive 

 and keep for some time the bodies of deceased persons. 

 During the whole existence of these establishments, not 

 one of the bodies transported into those asylums has been 

 known to return to life, as the authentic declarations of the 

 attendant doctors agree. The usefulness of such mortuary 

 houses is still more questionable in our time, when we have 

 a positive and certain means of recognizing real death. 

 Those police regulations that forbid autopsies and inter- 

 ments until the full term of delay for twenty-four hours, 

 measured from the declaration of death, still remain pru- 

 dent precautions, but they do not lessen at all the certainty 



