"PRIMITIVE IDEA."

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 117, 19 May 1928, Page 9

"PRIMITIVE IDEA."

THE SOUL'S HOVERING.

Surgeon Explains Life And

Death.

WHEN THE BRAIN DIES

(Australian and N.Z. Press Association.)

LONDON, May 18.

A new problem concerning life after death has been raised by a correspondent in a letter to the "Daily Telegraph." He asked what happened in the case of a resuscitated patient.

Sir Arthur Keith, Hunterian Professor, Royal College of Surgeons, whose lecture on May 10 is still the subject of controversy, has answered the letter.

He says: "Actually life departs gradually, and parts of the body may be alive. Do not be afraid of being buried alive because the brain cannot survive more than 10 minutes if it is deprived of oxygen.

"If the brain be dead, though the rest of the body be living tissue, that is death as we know it. There are many people living who have undergone an operation for heart massage. Hundreds of apparently drowned people have been brought back to life. All who have passed into unconsciousness agree that they had no feeling. A man loses consciousness, then all the rest is blank.

"The idea of the spirit hovering in space, mentioned by the correspondent, is very primitive. That is exactly what the Australian native thinks. He believes that when a man is asleep the soul departs and returns when he awakes. I thought we had advanced beyond that. At present we are cutting little bits out of rabbits or human beings and cultivating these particles of flesh, which will grow and live. You can divide an animal into parts and every part may die at a different time. So death is spread over two or three days. The flesh may live but the brain dies."