Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Aug 24, 1905

A REMARKABLE case of resuscitation of a person in whose body life was extinct is described in a recent press telegram from Des Moines, Iowa. An Italian named Veil had been attacked by a negro armed with a razor, and so severely cut that at Mercy Hospital, to which institution he was taken, all the physicians present pronounced him dead. The body was placed on a slab preparatory to a post-mortem examination. The report says:—

Every one pronounced the man dead. Without discussing the matter with any one, Dr. Conkling thrust his hand into an unsewed wound in the chest cavity until he found the heart and pinched it. He then withdrew his hand, and stood silently watching the form before him. In two minutes color began coming into the pale face, and the veins and arteries to dilate with blood. In three minutes more the man was breathing normally. Two women nurses used to hospital scenes fainted at the astounding spectacle, while the other physicians gave Dr. Conkling their hearty congratulations. This afternoon Veil’s wounds were sewed, and there is every indication that the man will live.

From the standpoint of popular theology, an interesting and pertinent question would be, Was this man’s “immortal soul,” the conscious entity which is declared to survive the death of the body, recalled from the place to which it had gone when life became extinct, by this act of the physician which restored the beating of the heart? Will this Italian be able to tell of the experience of being conscious at the moment of death?

No one whose body has become reanimated after the functions upon which life depends had ceased, has ever spoken of being conscious in death. From the case of Lazarus and others raised from the dead by Christ and the apostles, down to the cases of this day where life has ceased under conditions which admit of a re-establishment of the life functions, as in a case of drowning, all are silent concerning any such experience. They only know that they passed into a state of total unconsciousness.

Why should people cling to the theory of an immortal soul dwelling in the human body, in the face of revelation, reason, and all the facts of human experience to the contrary?