p. 11 | WHEN DOES DEATH COME?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 25, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 12.

WHEN DOES DEATH COME?

WHERE is the exact boundary between life and death? Up to within a few years it was supposed that a human being was really dead a few moments after breathing ceased; but Dr. Laborde, director of physiological work to the faculty of medicine in Paris, has proved that life may linger in the body hours after all signs of respiration have ceased to be observable. In all cases of suffocation, asphyxiation, narcotic poisoning, drowning, and the like, Dr. Laborde moves the tongue of the patient back and forth in regular cadence, instead of employing the usual means of raising and lowering the arms. The doctor has made what he calls a lingual tractor, a machine which moves the tongue back and forth a fixed distance and with exact rhythm. By its use persons have been revived who had apparently been dead for three hours. The doctor calls attention to the fact that a majority of persons who meet death in the water are killed by heart disease, and not by suffocation, which accounts for many failures in attempted resuscitation. —Examiner.