“Although the French Government is anxious to enforce throughout the whole empire the rules carried out in Paris, it is to be feared that great difficulties lie in the way. The verification of deaths on so enormous a scale, with strict minuteness, is almost impracticable. But, even if it were not, many timid persons would say: ‘Who is to assure us of the correctness of the doctor’s observations? Unfortunately, too many terrible examples of their fallibility are on record. The professional man is pressed for time. He pays a passing visit; gives a hurried glance; and a fatal mistake is so easily made!’ Public opinion will not be reassured until you can show, every time a death occurs, an irrefutable demonstration that life has departed.
“M. de Parville now announces the possibility of this great desideratum. He professes to place in any one’s hands a self-acting apparatus which would declare not only whether the death be real, but would leave in the hands of the experimenter a written proof of the reality of the death. The scheme is this: It is well known that atropine—the active principle of belladonna—possesses the property of considerably dilating the pupil of the eye. Oculists constantly make use of it when they want to perform an operation, or to examine the interior of the eye. Now, M. le Docteur Bouchut has shown that atropine has no action on the pupil when death is real. In a state of lethargy, the pupil, under the influence of a few drops of atropine, dilates in the course of a few minutes; the dilatation also takes place a few instants after death; but it ceases absolutely in a quarter of an hour, or half an hour at the very longest; consequently the enlargement of the pupil is a certain sign that death is only apparent.
AN INGENIOUS CONTRIVANCE.
“This premised, imagine a little camera obscura, scarcely so big as an opera-glass, containing a slip of photographic paper, which is kept unrolling for five-and-twenty or thirty minutes by means of clockwork. This apparatus, placed a short distance in front of the dead person’s eye, will depict on the paper the pupil of the eye, which will have been previously moistened with a few drops of atropine. It is evident that, as the paper slides before the eye of the corpse, if the pupil dilate, its photographic image will be dilated; if, on the contrary, it remains unchanged, the image will retain its original size. An inspection of the paper then enables the experimenter to read upon it whether the death is real or apparent only. This sort of declaration can be handed to the civil officer, who will give a permit to bury in return.
“By this simple method a hasty or careless certificate of death becomes impossible. The instrument applies the test, and counts the minutes. The doctor and the civil officer are relieved from further responsibility. The paper gives evidence that the verification has actually and carefully been made; for suppose that half an hour is required to produce a test that can be relied on, the length of the strip of paper unrolled marks the time during which the experiment has been continued. An apparatus of the kind might be placed in the hands of the minister or one of the notables of every parish. Such a system would silence the apprehensions of the most timid; fears—natural enough—would disappear, and the world would be shocked by no fresh cases of premature burial.”
The authors have not heard whether this ingenious contrivance had been put into practice, or with what result.
Various prizes have been offered, and awards made, by scientific and medical societies, but, with one exception, the so-called proofs of death for which the awards have been given are deemed unsatisfactory. The most notable of the prizes is that of the Marquis d’Ourches, who by his will bequeathed the sum of twenty thousand francs to be given to the author of the discovery of a simple and common means of recognising beyond doubt the absolute signs of death, by such a test as could be adopted by poor villagers without technical instruction. The Marquis d’Ourches left also a prize of five thousand francs for a similar discovery, but requiring the intervention of an expert. M. Pierre Manni, Professor at the University of Rome, offered a prize, which was awarded to Dr. E. Bouchut, in 1846. And M. Dusgate, by will, dated January 11, 1872, bequeathed to the French Academy of Sciences a sufficient sum in French Rentes, to found a quinquennial prize of two thousand five hundred francs to the author of the best work on the diagnostic signs of death, and the means of preventing premature interments. A decree of November 27, 1874, authorised the Academy to accept this legacy.
Dr. Gowers, on “Diseases of the Nervous System,” vol. ii., p. 1037, says:—“In cases of ‘death-trance,’ in which no sign of vitality can be recognised, the presence of life may be ascertained (1) by the absence of any sign of decomposition; (2) by the normal appearance of the fundus oculi as seen with the ophthalmoscope; (3) by the persistence of the excitability of the muscles to electricity. This excitability disappears in three hours after actual death. In a case observed by Rosenthal, thirty hours after supposed death, the muscles were still excitable, and the patient awoke.”
The British Medical Journal, January 21, 1893, p. 145, reports, through its Paris correspondent, the first award. “The Académie des Sciences proposed as the subject for the Dusgate Prize for 1890, ‘The Signs of Death, and the Means of Preventing Premature Burial.’ The prize has been awarded to Dr. Maze, who considers that putrefaction is the only certain sign. He urges that the deaths should be certified by medical men on oath; also that in every cemetery there should be a mortuary where dead bodies can be deposited, and that burial should take place only when putrefactive changes set in. Cremation should be adopted.”