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Evening Star, Issue 12866, 16 July 1906, Page 4

Some three or four months ago the Bishop of London had occasion to Iho Sensation undergo a slight operation of Death. for which an anaesthetic was necessary, and, preaching afterwards at St. Pancras Parish Church, he described his sensations under the anaesthetic in the following terms:— “ At an operation, when you receive what- “ over it is that makes you for the time “ being insensible, yon seem to be carried “ for the moment out of the body—the body “is for the time dead. Your spirit, your “mind, is perfectly active. I dare say it “is the experience of* many others that “yon seem to be swept swiftly under the “ stars towards your God. When you are “ out of the body, or seem to be, if only “ for a few moments, yon realise what “ death will be.” In commenting upon the Bishop’s account of his sensations, the ‘Medical Journal’ says that, while they are interesting, they do not appear to afford ground for an accurate forecast of the sensation of dying, nor throw much light on the psychology of the anaesthetic state. This is a question that baa been much discussed and been subjected to various speculations ; but what the actual sensations when under the anaesthetic really are, or whether there are then any sensations at all, is still uncertain. It is known that during the stage before consciousness is actually abolished patients behave differently—“ one “man sings, another swears, a third con- “ fesses Ins sins ” —and it is probable that the Bishop’s sensations belong to this stage, and, as in other cases, were determined by his education and habitual attitude of thought, and that they throw no more light on the sensation of dying than the not uncommon case where a person dreams that he is dead and is conscious of the mourning of his friends and the preparations for the funeral. In most cases there appears to be a complete loss of consciousness from the time the patient is fully under the influence of the anaesthetic till he awakes again, and it seems likely that during this time there are no sensations of any kind. This was the case with a medical man who had undergone an operation and wrote to the ‘ Medical Journal ’ on the subject shortly after the Bishop's experience had been related therein. He says that he occupied his mind with the idea of getting under as quickly and quietly as possible, and talked to the anaesthetist as long as he could, his last remark being "Now I am going,” and that after that he ceased to be, so far as consciousness of any thought or feeling was concerned.” In this wise the patient was under the anaesthetic for fully an hour and a-half, and he suggests that in the Bishop’s case the slightness of the operation and the lightness of the anaesthesia may explain the sensations experienced. Of course, the fact that after the period of unconsciousness is over there is no recollection of any thought or feeling does not prove that the mind was completely inactive during that time. In most cases of hypnosis there is no recollection in the waging state of what was done during the hypnotic condition; but for all that there is a sub-conscious memory of it. and this may often be revived and questioned by putting the person again into the hypnotic state. The same thing is true of some cases of double personality and of other obscure mental conditions, and since it is the same body that has to undergo the sensations, whatever the conscious state may be, it is possible that it may retain a subconscious, or, as the late Mr Myers would have said, t’i subliminal, consciousness of all that has happened to it, and that this could be brought into the normal consciousness by appropriate means; but no attempt seems to have been made to recover in this way the sensations, if any, of the anaesthetic condition. The only practical outcome of the discussion appears to be that the general opinion is that, whatever pain or suffering there may be before, the actual moment of dying is as free from pain ot other sensation as the act pf falling asleep.