Two Forms of Death.

Bush Advocate, Volume XI, Issue 832, 16 September 1893, Page 5

Two Forms of Death.

There are tv?o formß of physical death constantly going ou in tho world — Bays tho " Vegetarian " molecular death and somatic death. The first is expressed in other words by saying that the whole of the body is constanly heing worn ont and being renewed. Every action that we perform, every breath we draw, nnd overy thought we chink,is eaoh accompanied by the death of a certain amount of muscular or nervous tissue, co that molecular death is a neceß&ary part of daily life. Somatic death is the death of the entire individual, and is generally considered to tako place at the momentof cessation of circulation and respiration. This is not on absolute test, however, as several well-kuown oases prove. Colonel Townsend w«s a peauliar cape of a man who could by the effect of his will voluntarily suspend thoso functions for a considerable time, while the continuation of the circulation is sometimes bo dillicult to determine that even the eminent anatomist Vesalius once opened an apparently dead body and found the heart still beatinar. A Frenoh author, Bruhier, in 1742, collected records of fifty-four persons who had been wrongly supposed to have been dead.