LIFE AFTER DEATH

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 19 May 1928, Page 5

LIFE AFTER DEATH

I NEW PROBLEM ARISES. BRAIN AND TiHE FLESH. SIR ARTHUR KEITH'S VIEWS. lUNITKL) I'll ESS A SSOCI ATI ON—B V ELECT Kl l TEL ELI U A i'il —LX) P Y RIU HT.) (AUSTRALIAN CRESS ASSOCIATION.; LONDON, May IS. A new problem concerning life after death has been raised by the correspondent in the “Daily Telegraph, ’ who asks what happens in the case of a reisucitated patient. Sir Arthur Keith, whose statement that death is the end is still the subject of controversy, in answer says that actually life depart gradually and that parts of tiie body may be alive two days after the man himself is dead, but people need not be afraid of being buried alive, because tile brain cannot survive more than ten minutes if deprived of oxygen. If 1 the brain is dead though the rest of the body be living tissue, that is death as we know it. There were many people who had undergone operations for heart massage. Hundreds of apparently drowned -people had been brought back to life. All who passed into unconsciousness agreed that they’ had no feeling. A man loses consciousness and all the rest is blank. “The idea of a spirit hovering in space mentioned by the correspondent is very primitive, ’, says Sir Arthur, “That is exactly what the Australian native thinks, believing that when a man is asleep the soul departs and returns when he awakens. We are at present cutting little bits out of a rabbit or a human ,and cultivating these patricles of flesh, which will grow and live. You can divide an animal into a million parts and every part may die at a different time, .so that death is spread over two or three days. The flesh may Jive, but the brain dies.”