Starling and Lane (Lancet, Nov. 22, 1902, p. 1397) were operating upon a man 65 years of age. The heart and respiration ceased. Lane put his hand into the abdominal incision and squeezed the heart through the diaphragm. After twelve minutes of artificial respiration the lungs and heart began to act. The patient afterward was discharged from the hospital cured.
Sick (Centralblatt f. Chirurgie, Sept. 5, 1903, p. 981) reports a very remarkable case. A boy of 15 years of age died upon the operating table. Three quarters of an hour after the heart had ceased to beat it was laid bare. The flaps did not bleed, the pericardium was bloodless, the heart was motionless, relaxed, and cold. After a quarter of an hour, during which the heart was compressed, and artificial respiration was kept up, that is, one hour after what any physician would call death, the heart was beating and respiration was restored. Two hours later the boy became conscious and complained of great thirst and dyspnoea. He remained in this condition for twenty-seven hours, and during that time his speech was indistinct but intelligible. He then died.
Dr. George W. Crile, of Cleveland, Ohio, reports the case of a woman whose heart movement and respiration had ceased for six minutes. She was restored completely, even without exposing the heart. Dr. Crile uses an inflated rubber suit on the patient to raise the blood pressure by peripheral resistance—he does not expose the heart. He had another case, a man 38 years of age, who "died during operation, was resuscitated, and died again two hours later."
Two Hungarian labourers, whose skulls had been crushed in the same accident, were brought into Dr. Crile's clinic in a dying condition. The heart of one of these men ceased beating as he was brought into the operating room. After nine minutes the surgeons began to work upon him to resuscitate him. They succeeded, but he lived for only 28 minutes.
They then examined the other man and found him dead. Just 45 minutes after this second patient had been brought into the operating room the effort to resuscitate him began. As he had not been observed while the physicians had been engaged with the first man, they do not know when his heart [{167}] had ceased to beat, but he certainly was dead in the opinion of skilled observers. They resuscitated him so well that he moved his head away from the operator who was relieving the depression of the skull, but he died again in 34 minutes.
These cases are not what is commonly called conditions of suspended animation. All the patients would have been pronounced dead by any physician, and if they had been left untouched, they surely never would have been revived.
There have been about thirty attempts made by surgeons to restore patients who were dead in the full acceptance of the term as used at present. Four of these attempts resulted in complete success, others in a partial recovery, and many were without positive result. The number of complete and partial resuscitations, however, are enough to justify a priest in giving conditional absolution or baptism within an hour, or even two hours, after a patient has to all appearance died, especially in accident cases. We do not know when the soul enters the body, and there is the same doubt as to the moment when the soul leaves the body. In these latter cases we should give the patient the benefit of the doubt.
AUSTIN ÓMALLEY.