CAN SCIENCE RAISE THE DEAD?

Mt Benger Mail, 19 October 1938, Page 1

CAN SCIENCE RAISE THE DEAD?

(By Smith’s Weekly Medical) Correspondent.) ‘‘My husband lies dead. We have preserved his body by refrigeration... J will pay you any sum, you please jfjou will” bring him back to life by means of your wonderful, invention, the Arti-ficial-Heart!”;;' *' h Speaker, - a young French widow a month 1 ago. Her desperate pica was addressed to a famous Freeh surgeon, Alexis Carrel, whose experiments with the Lindbergh artificial heart were well-known. But Carrel was forced to reply to the half-crazed widow, “Madam, I cannot perform miracles.” Yet so swiftly does scientific research advance that the miracles of one generation become the commonplace of the next. Maybe a truer reply to this bereaved woman might have been: “I cannot perform this miracle —yet. ” The dead have been restored to life on many occasions when a patient has died on the operating table. Breathing has stopped; the heart has ceased to boat. The surgeon plunges -a - needle charged with adrenalin into the heart wall, or with his fingers massages the heart through the diaphragm. The dead—in some eases—have returned to life. There is a time-limit. In Australia, two minutes’ death. Elsewhere, up to 15 minutes have been recorded. Daisy Allen, aged 22, was revived after this interval at Oxford (England), but surgeons are sceptical. Stumpling-block — the brain. The term “death” is illusory. We say a person.dies when breath and pulse cease. This merely means that the cells of the body get no more food or oxygen. They die slowly, one after the other, up to several weeks after the apparent death. The brain-cells die first; then those of the. organs of the body. The muscles last a day or so; hardy tissues like skin, and Tiair keep alive for weeks or longer. No human being dies “all in one (piece. ” Germs, of coure, invade a dead body'and destroy its vitality rapidly; but, if a body is frozen, avoiding this, why should not the dead be revived by’ means of a temporary artificial circulation? .vj.'

Recent experiments:- animals. Dr Cornish (U.S.A.), a dog, killed by overdose of ether. Half-an-hour after breathing stopped, five minutes after heart death, dog recovered; but blind, could not stand. Eventually could crawl, bark, eat and sit up, but never quite alert mentally. Rhesus monkey (Ralph Willard, U.S.A.), kept throe days in refrigerator after death by freezing. - Complete recovery reported; but scientists traverse Willard’s claims.

Human beings. Young man, three hours after suicide by hanging. Revived by artificial heart, and circulation. “Lived”'two minutes (consciousness not restored), Brukalenko (Russia). Russian experimenters report a still more gruesome case. A man’s Body, after 29 hours in the morgue, gave signs of life after two hours’ work with artificial circulation, warmth and heart-injections.

It is said that there was a we ah gurgle in the throat. As artificial respiration was being applied at the time, this is not proof of life, and, generally, scientists believe these Russian experiments have been exaggerated. It is however, quite true that the ghastly experiment of keeping a dog’s head alive after detachment from its body was successfully carried out at Moscow. But in this case the head was given an artificial circulation iminedi'(itely. Strictly speaking, it had not “died” at all. w LtfXlf:

The brain-cells are thus the stumb-i ling-block to revival after death. In 1935 a gardener, John Puckering, at Birmingham General Hospital (England), died on the table while being operated on for duodenal ulcer. It was five minutes before he was brought back to life, the deciding factors being heart-massage and the adrenalin needle. Puckering told reporters an astounding story. While dead he said he had spent five minutes in the ante-room of Heaven. It was a large room, round which sat people, in ordinary clothes, in a state of indescribable bliss. Medical records tell a different story. After recovery, Puckering was a raving maniac. He had to be strapped to his bed for over a week, and it was 48 hours before he made an intelligent remark. Eventually he recovered sanity.

A few minutes' longer death and this man (doctors say) would have remained a permanent lunatic, for the greater part of his brain would be damaged or dead. But is this decision final? Cornish’s latest experiments with dogs show that after a period the damaged brain may recover. The dead animal brought to life has slowly learnt to walk, and to recognise its surroundings and friends. It is in the condition of the newly-born. If a fraction or 1 its brain-cells survive, they may be taught anew. In frozen polar wastes lie the bodies of many explorers that died from exposure or starvation,

These bodies are perfectly preserved, and undamaged. Would it be possible to recover and revive, say, the body of Captain Oates, of Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition of 1912, by means of an artificial circulation.

This amazing suggestion is not so preposterous as it may seem. In the freezing cold into which Oates walked (a suicide to save his comrades —un