VARIOUS TESTS CONSIDERED.
One of the most distinguished physicians in London informed the author that, being called in to decide a case of apparent or real death, he had applied the stethoscope and failed to detect the faintest pulsation in the heart, and yet the woman recovered. The danger of premature burial he believed to be very real and by no means an imaginary one, and his opinions were well known in the profession.
THE RESPIRATORY TEST.
Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, in his paper on “The Absolute Signs and Proofs of Death,” in the Asclepiad, No. 21 (1889), vol. vi., p. 6, says:—
“About the existence of respiratory movements there is always some cause for doubt, even amongst skilled observers; for so slight a movement of respiration is sufficient to carry on life, at what I have in another paper designated ‘life at low tension,’ the most practised eye is apt to be deceived.”
“The cessation of the indications of respiratory function, although useful in a general sense, is not by any means reliable. It is quite certain that in poisoning by chloral, and in catalepsy, there may be life when no external movement of the chest is appreciable.”—Ibidem, pp. 13, 14.
CARDIAC AND ARTERIAL FAILURE TEST.
“Equal doubt attends the absence of the arterial pulsations and heart sounds. It is quite certain that the pulses of the body, as well as the movements and sounds of the heart, may be undetectable at a time when the body is not only not dead but actually recoverable.”—Ibidem, p. 14.
In a review of several works on the “Signs of Death” in The British and Foreign Medical and Chirurgical Review, vol. xv. [1855], p. 74, W. B. Kesteven writes that Bouchut’s test of the cessation of the action of the heart for one or two minutes is not to be relied upon as a certain sign of death. “M. Josat has recorded several instances wherein newly-born children have been most carefully examined during several minutes without the detection of the slightest cardial sound or movement, and yet these have rallied and lived. M. Depaul has collected ten similar instances. M. Brachet has recorded[14] an instance of a man in whom neither sound nor movement of the heart could be heard for eight minutes, and who, nevertheless, survived. Another adult case is mentioned by Dr. Josat as having been witnessed by M. Girbal, of Montpellier.... Sir B. Brodie and others have described children born without hearts. The circulation is maintained at one period of human life without the aid of the heart. It is, besides, quite consistent with the facts observed in hysterical and other conditions of the nervous system, that the action of the heart, like that of other muscles, should be so extremely feeble as not to be cognisable by any sound or impulse, and yet it may have sufficient movement slowly to move the blood through the system, whose every function and endowment is suspended and all but annihilated. In cases of catalepsy, and of authentic instances of apparent death, the respiratory muscles have not been seen to move, yet inspiration and expiration—however slowly and imperceptibly—must have taken place.”
THE PUTREFACTIVE TEST.