AFTER DEATH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20150, 19 May 1928, Page 7

AFTER DEATH

A NEW PROBLEM Parts of the Body Live After Man Himself Passes RESUSCITATED PATIENTS STR. ARTHUR KEITH’S VIEWS IBy Telegraph—Per Press Assn.—Copyright ] [ Australian Press Assn. ] Received Mav 18, 9 p.m. LONDON, -May 18. A new problem concerning lif® after death has been raised by a correspondent in the Daily Telegraph who asks what happens in cases of resuscitated patients. Sir Arthur Keith, whose -ecent lecture is still the subject of a controversy, answering, says: “Actually life •departs gradually, and parts of the body may be alive two days after man himself is dead: But people need not be 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 wc know it. There are many people who have undergone an operation for heart massage. Hundreds of apparently drowned people have been brought back to lite. ‘‘All who have passed into unconsciousness agree that they have had no feeling. Man loses consciousness, then all the rest is a 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 man is asleep the soul departs and returns when he awakes. I thought we had advanced beyond that. “We are at present cutting little bits out of a rabbit • r a human and cultivating these particles 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 three days. The flesh may live but the brain dies.”