Part 4

Among the most remarkable of these efforts have been those of Vianney, of Lyons, who has shown that it is possible to remove the head end of several different insect larvæ without preventing their development and metamorphosis into the butterfly stage. In Bombyx larvæ, for example, the butterflies arrived at the mature stage, with streaked wings and beautiful coloration, but almost headless. These anencephalous insects lived for some time.

Few animals survive exposures of any length to a temperature much over 150 F., and most of them are killed by considerably less heat. Freezing has always been considered equally fatal. Gangrene is the common result of freezing a part of the human body, and that means local death. Extraordinary pains must be taken with a frozen ear or finger if its vitality is to be restored. And so even with the hibernating, or the cold-blooded animals, a really low temperature has been generally regarded as fatal.

But the recent experiments of Pictet, who did so much in the production of exceedingly low temperatures, freezing of gases, etc., have shown some startling results in the failure to kill goldfish and other of the lower animals by refrigeration. For instance, goldfish were placed in a tank whose water was gradually frozen while the fish were still moving therein. The result was a cake of ice with imprisoned supposedly dead fish. This ice was then reduced to a still lower temperature, at which it was maintained for over two months. It was then very slowly thawed out, whereupon the fish came to life and moved in apparently their normal and natural ways as if nothing had happened.

This confirms Pictet's early experiments and convictions, that if the chemical reactions of living organisms can be suspended without causing organic lesions the phenomena of life will temporarily disappear, to return when conditions are again as usual. It is worth relating that his fish frozen in this way could be broken in small pieces just as if they were part of the ice itself.

How often during these recent decades when events have seemed to move faster, when discoveries and inventions have been announced at such frequent and brief intervals that we fail to note them all for lack of time, when haste and rush characterize habits alike of life and thought, do we find that we simply must stop, as it were for breath, while we unload a large amount of accumulated mental rubbish and clear a space in our storage capacity for up-to-date knowledge! It is a decennial mental house-cleaning process. We must unlearn so much of that which ten to forty years ago we so laboriously learned. We must adopt new and improved reasoning processes. But it is hard to do all this. For instance, as a boy I learned the old chemistry quite thoroughly. During a subsequent interval, when I did not need to study it, came the new chemistry, and when I again required it I had not only to study a practically new science--which was not so bad--but to rid my brain of much that had really found firm lodgment there, and this was difficult or impossible. So it is with one who, having been brought up on Euclidean geometry, finds himself confronted with the comparatively new non-Euclidean, and who has then not merely to forget, but to unlearn all those fundamental axioms which seemed so plain and so indisputable, that is, if he would accept the teachings of Bolyai and others. For example, that a straight line is not necessarily the shortest route between two points shocks our Euclidean orthodoxy, and is at the same time, to us, inconceivable; as also that parallel lines indefinitely prolonged may touch, and the like; likewise the concept of four-dimensional spaces, or worse yet, n-dimensional. And now, in somewhat like manner and to a certain degree, must we revise our previous conceptions of death, at least to this extent: Not that we yet know much better than we did what it really is, but that we know more about what it is not. Even save, perhaps, in its instantaneous happening it is but a step toward dissolution, usually not the first, certainly not the last, but yet the most conspicuous.

Death is in many respects a biochemical fact. It is so intertwined with ionic changes in the arrangement of matter that we may hope for more information regarding some of its aspects as knowledge of the latter accumulates.

But, evidently, we need to clarify our notions as we rearrange our facts. Somatic death is, after all, a most complex process. It may be shortened by instant and complete incineration, but scarcely in any other way. Even dynamite would scarcely simplify the problem. As to conscious death, that is probably (though not certainly) a matter of seconds only or possibly fractions of a second. While we have no accurate appreciation of what constitutes consciousness, nor even just where it resides, the central nervous system appears to be its most probable seat. But conscious death may occur almost instantly without injury to this system, as when a bullet passes through the thorax and the heart, without injuring the spine.

But what is it that suddenly checks all concerted and interdependent activity? Or does something or some controlling agency suddenly leave the body?

A recent theory, having features to commend it, is to the effect that life is a property or a feature of the ultimate corpuscles which compose the atom. Since these corpuscles bear to their containing atom a relative size comparable to that of the tiniest visible insect winging its way in a large church edifice, the intricacies of this particular theory readily appear. But it does seem as though among ourselves life has much to do with the hitherto neglected and despised nitrogen atom or molecule, since life inheres par excellence in nitrogen compounds. Moreover, vitality is conspicuously a feature of those chemical elements which have the lowest atomic weight, while at the other end of the table of atomic weights stands radium, of whose destructive emanations I have already spoken.

Another phase of the general subject of thanatology was suggested especially by Osier, who a few years ago called attention to the fact that but few, if any patients really die of the disease from which they have been suffering. This is not a paradox, and needs only reason and observation to confirm it. His statement was a preliminary to the consideration of terminal infections and toxemias, which of itself would be sufficient to erect thanatology into a dignified special study. Take, for instance, a patient who has long suffered from diabetes. The end is characterized by coma, i. e., an evidence of profound toxemia, and is in large measure due to acetonemia. A patient with chronic Bright's disease dies of uremic poisoning, or one with pneumonia dies of genuine heart-failure. The terminal stage of cancer is, again, toxemia of one kind or another, according as it has interfered with digestion, with respiration, or some other vital function, or has broken down, thus saturating the patient with septic products.

This aspect of the subject will bear any amount of study and elaboration, and its mention here should be sufficient for my purpose. Accordingly as it is properly appreciated, it will be recognized as having an important practical bearing, since, if we may foresee the direction from which the final danger threatens, it may be the better and the longer averted.

Another very important and practical subject is wrapped up in this one, namely, the utilization of apparently dead, or at least of only potentially living material (tissue) in the various methods of grafting or transplantation, which are to-day a part of the surgeon's work. The methods are themselves a transplantation of experiences gained by work in the vegetable kingdom. What wonder that the marvels revealed in one department should have incited work along parallel lines in the other? That flowers and fruit of one kind may be made to grow on a tree of a very different kind excites but a small amount of the astonishment it deserves, mainly because it is now a common occurrence, though properly regarded it might seem a miracle.

Differing only in minor respect is, for example, the removal of thyroidal tissue from one human being and its implantation into another, with functional success. One may ask just here, how is this matter concerned with thanatology? And the reply is: If this tissue were taken from a fresh corpse it would be by most people regarded as dead tissue. If so, does the dead come to life? Without violating the proper scientific use of the imagination one may fancy something like the following: Let a healthy young woman meet accidental and instantaneous death. It would be possible to use no inconsiderable portion of her body for grafting or other justifiable surgical procedures. The arteries and nerves could be used, both in the fresh state, and the former even after preservation, for suitable transplantation or repair work on the vascular and nervous systems of a considerable number of other people. So also could the thyroid, the cornea, the ovaries and especially the bones. All the teeth, if healthy, could be reimplanted. With the thin bones, ribs especially, plastic operations--particularly on the noses--of fifty people could be made. And then the exterior of the body could be made to supply any amount of normal integument with which to do heterologous dermatoplastic operations, or would furnish an almost inexhaustible supply of epidermis for Thiersch grafts, which latter material need not be used in the fresh state, but could be preserved and made available some days and even weeks later. A portion of the muscles might possibly be made available for checking oozing from bleeding surfaces of others, if used while still fresh and warm, and possibly portions of the ureters or some other portion of the remains might be utilized for some unusual purpose. Then what extracts or extractives might be prepared from other parts of the body, pituitary, adrenals, bone-marrow, etc.? The tendons might also be prepared for sutures. Every one of these procedures would give promise of success, the technic being in every respect satisfactory.

But the possible limit is not yet reached, since with each kidney might be carried out experiments like those feats of physiologic jugglery such as Carrel has shown us, by implanting one, say in the neck, connecting up the renal with the carotid artery, and the renal vein with the jugular, while some receptacle would have to be provided as a terminal for the ureter.

This is, after all, not a fantastic dream, nor such an extreme picture as would at first appear, since every organ or tissue above-mentioned--and more--has been used as indicated, and with success.

But imagine the dead body affording viable products, even indirectly life itself, to (possibly) so many others! Does this complicate the study of death? And what must become of the simple credulous faith of the zealot who believes in the actual and absolute resurrection, at some later date?

There is something more than mere transcendentalism in the science of thanatology; it has a plausible medico-legal and pragmatic import. Right glad should I be if I might arouse a deserved interest in it.

How may I more fittingly conclude than by quoting a few lines from our own Bryant's "Thanatopsis":

"Earth that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements."

Though were I minded to rehearse certain difficulties met in the preparation of this paper, which I have long had in mind, I might also add the following lines from the same poet's "Hymn to Death":

"Alas! I little thought that the stern power Whose fateful praise I sung, would try me thus Before the strain was ended."

One may well quote, at this point, Lamartine, who asked, "What is life but a series of preludes to that mystery whose initial solemn note is tolled by death?" (On this theme Liszt built up that wonderful symphonic tone poem "Les Preludes.")

Even infinity is now questioned by the mathematicians. This being the case, where shall we, where can we stop?

NOTE.--While writing the foregoing paper there came to my notice the recent book "Death; Its Causes and Phenomena," by Carrington and Meader (London, 1911). It is interesting, but save that it contains a helpful bibliography, is of little assistance to one wishing to pursue the study from its pragmatic aspect. One of the authors is committed to a personal theory that death is caused by cessation of the vibrations which during life maintain vital activity; the other that death is, as it were, the culmination of a bad habit of expectancy that something of the kind must occur, into which we have fallen, in spite of the fact that other living beings below man undergo the same fate, though not capable of expecting anything.

III

SERPENT-MYTHS AND SERPENT-WORSHIP

A Presidential Address before the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences.

Since the dawn of written history, and from the most remote periods, the serpent has been regarded with the highest veneration as the most mysterious of living creatures. Being alike an object of wonder, admiration and fear, it is not strange that it became early connected with numerous superstitions; and when we remember how imperfectly understood were its habits we shall not wonder at the extraordinary attributes with which it was invested, nor perhaps even why it obtained so general a worship. Thus centuries ago Horapollo referring to serpent symbolism, said: "When the Egyptians were representing a universe they delineated the spectacle as a variegated snake devouring its own tail, the scales intimating the stars in the universe, the animal being extremely heavy, as is the earth, and extremely slippery like the water; moreover it every year puts off its old age with its skin as, in the universe, the recurring year effects a corresponding change, and becomes renovated, while the making use of its own body for food implies that all things whatever which are generated by divine providence in the world undergo a corruption into them again."