SIR ARTHUR KEITH RIDICULES IDEA OF A HOVERING SPIRIT

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6614, 19 May 1928, Page 9

SIR ARTHUR KEITH RIDICULES IDEA OF A HOVERING SPIRIT

Life Departs Bit By Bit From Body, He Says

AYE 'DIE,’ THEN ALL IS

BLANK

United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. Received Friday, 7.15 P m - LONDON, Alay IS.

A new problem concerning life aitcr death has been raised by a correspondent in the “Daily Telegraph,” asking what happened in cases or a resuscitated patient. • Sir Arthur Keith, whose lecture of May 10 is still tho subject of controversy, answering says that actually life departs gradually and parts of the body may live two days after a man himself is dead. But people need not bo afraid of being buried alive because the brain cannot survive more than ten minutes if deprived of oxygen. If the brain is dead, though the rest of the body be living tissue, that is death as we know it. There arc many people who have undergone an operation for heart massage. Hundreds of apparently drowned people have been brought back to life. All who passed into unconsciousness agree they had no feeling, 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, believing that when a man is asleep his soul departs and returns when ho awakes. “I thought wo had advanced beyond that. “Wc arc tit present cutting little bits out of a rabbit or a human being and cultivating these particles of flesh which will grow and live. A.'ou 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. Flesh may live but tho brain dies.”