DOES SPIRIT SURVIVE?

Taranaki Daily News, 19 May 1928, Page 13

DOES SPIRIT SURVIVE?

CONTROVERSY IN ENGLAND SCIENTIST'S VIEWS OF DEATH BODY" MAY" DIE IN PARTS V - •* Totegr* ph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Australian Press Association. I Received May 18, 7.15 p.m. London, May 18. A new problem concerning life after Aeath has been raised by a correspondent In the Daily Telegraph, who asks what happens in the case of a resuscitated patient. Sir Arthur Keith, whose statement that death is the end is still the subject of controversy, in answer says that actually life departs gradually and that parts of the body may be alive two days after the man himself is dead, but people need not be afraid of being buried alive, because the brain eannot 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 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. I thought we had advanced beyond that. We are at present cutting little bits out of a rabbit or a human and cultivating these particles of flesh, which will grow and live. You can divide an animal into a million narts and every part may die at a different time, so that death is spread over two or three days. The flesh may live, but the brain dies.”