Death and sudden death / by P. Brouardel. Translated by F. Lucas Benham.

  • Brouardel, P. (Paul), 1837-1906.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Death and sudden death / by P. Brouardel. Translated by F. Lucas Benham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    of preservation of these remains was not sufficient proof, and that they might well belong to a woman who had been killed a week before. I was right; for, when the remainder of the body was brought from Le Mans, the limbs accurately fitted the trunk, which was decomposed. You understand, then, gentlemen, that it is sometimes ex- tremely difficult to say whether such and such a person is or is not dead. You will meet with insurmountable difficulties when you have to fix the time that has elapsed between the moment at which the fatal blow was received and that at which life ceased. Suspension of the heart's action in par- ticular is not sufficient proof. Nevertheless, in acute dis- eases, the moment when the heart ceases is evidently, to within a few minutes, the moment of death. But it has not been shown scientifically that an individual whose heart no longer beats cannot be recalled to life. On the contrary, it is certain that some conditions exist which may be styled the state of apparent death. We might definitely choose some sign as a distinction between life and death, and use it in a conventional way; but I am very much afraid that, however elastic this convention might be, whatever sign might be proposed to denote the moment of death, this sign and this convention will always remain useless in doubtful cases, and we are obliged to acknowledge that we have no sign or group of signs sufficient to determine the moment of death with scientific certainty in all cases.