IS DEATH PAINLESS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1395, 4 June 1883, Page 3

IS DEATH PAINLESS.

A Philadelphia physician has made a special duty of tho phenomena of death, both through his personal observations and thoso of others, and his tfonclusion is that the dissolution is painless, I mean," ho explains, " that it approaches as unconsciously as sleep. 'J'he soul leaves the world as painlessly as it enters it, Whatever be the cause of death, whether by lingering malady or sudden violence, dissolution comes either through syncope or asphyxia, In the latter case, when resulting from disease, the struggle is long protrrcted, and accompanied by all the visible marks of agony which the imagination associates with the closing scene of life. .Death does not strike all the organs of the body at the same time, and the lungs are tho last to give up the performance of their functions. As death approaches the latter gradually become more and more oppressed; hence the rattle. Nor is the contact sufficiently perfect to change the black venous into the red arterial blood; an unarepared fluid consequently issues from tho lungs, into the heart, and is then transmitted to every other organ of the body. The brain receives it, and its energies appear to be lulled thereby into sleepgenerally tranquil sleep—filled with dreams which impel the, dying to murmur out the names of friends and the occupations and recollections of past life"