Cause of death

“ When proofs of respiration—it may be to such an extent as to leave no doubt as to live-birth—have been found, the cause of death is then to be investigated. Wounds, and other forms of injury, must be sought for. There may be signs of strangulation, suffocation, puncture of the fontanelles and consequent injury to the brain, the administration of a poison, or other means of procuring death. ”

“ In the latter case death may be due as much, if not more, to other causes than the wound, and sometimes not at all to the wound itself. Thus death may be due to natural causes, latent disease, an unhealthy state of the body, imprudence or neglect of treatment, or improper treatment, etc. These various degrees of responsibility of a wound as the cause of death we will now consider more at length. ”

“ Apoplexy, organic heart disorders, aneurysms, and other like disorders are in such cases generally the direct cause of death, coitus causing the death indirectly by the excitement and exertion accompanying the act. ”

“ It being, therefore, beyond doubt that the aggregate antecedent, the death, is the actual cause of the whole train of consequents, whatever of the circumstances attending the death can be shown to be followed in all its variations by variations in the effect under investigation, must be the particular feature of the fact of death on which that effect depends. The degree of muscular irritability at the time of death fulfills this condition. ”

“ Grey hairs, or enfeebled frames, and the perceptible growth within us of the seeds of mortal disease, and sick beds, and sudden deaths around us, may cause us momentary misgivings, may make us perhaps permanently a little uneasy: but still we live on, as though there were no end of life; we put off preparation for death, and for another state after death, as though we could not die till we chose to do so. ”

“ One little drop flowing through your heart; a vein bursting in your breast; a suffocating cold in the throat, a violent rush of blood, a fever, a wound, a flash of lightning, is enough to deprive you of life. Death will come to you when you least expect it. ”

“ And a man with death's dews on his forehead, and blood on his coat and his cheek;
"I am dying — I feel death upon me — but yet, even yet, if God wills
I may crawl on my knees to the doctor's — yes, this is the last of the hills! ”

“ By my troth, cousin, methinketh that the death which men commonly call "natural" is a violent death to every may whom it fetcheth hence by force against his will. And that is every man who, when he dieth, is loth to die and fain would yet live longer if he could.
Howbeit, cousin, fain would I know who hath told you how small is the pain in the natural death! As far as I can perceive, those folk that commonly depart of their natural death have ever one disease and sickness or another. ”

“ Natural death is rare.—Accidental death may be divided into that brought on by diseases, and that which happens suddenly.—The latter will more particularly occupy us.—Why?—General phenomenon of all sudden deaths.—They all commence by the heart, lungs and brain.—Course we shall pursue in the examination. ”

“ We die every day; every moment deprives us of a portion of life, and advances us a step toward the grave: the body pines, health decays, and every thing which surrounds assists to destroy us; food corrupts, medicines weaken us; the spiritual fire, which internally animates, consumes us; and our whole fife is only a long and painful sickness. Now, in this situation, what image ought to be so familiar to man as death? ”

“ A poultice of tea-leaves was tied over the left ear, as if for the relief of pain, and a post-mortem examination showed death to have resulted from an effusion of blood on the brain. A verdict of ‘sudden death from natural causes’ was returned. Thus closed a life which had not yet lasted fifty years, and held the promise of even more than it had already performed. ”

“ Have you not, lastly, often read, and as often been told, that bodily death is one of the most tremendous evils which man has to fear, and consequently to be dreaded as the scourge of all scourges, and the plague of all plagues, in the long catalogue of human miseries? ”

“ If the causes of death in certificates were given more exactly, this proportion would be without doubt still greater. These deaths cannot be fairly brought under the heading “Old age.” This is what we die of! ”

“ They are dying daily, and continually wasting: Destroyed from morning to evening. Death is still working in us, like a mole digging our grave at each remove, and we so continually lie exposed that we are killed all the day long. [3.] Their life is short, and in a little time they are cut off. It lasts perhaps but from morning to evening. ”

“ Till then, however severe may be the disease, however sharp the pang, we are only sick or wounded, as the case may be.
—————- * Dhatu—the seven principal substances of the human body—chyle, flesh, blood, fat, bones, marrow, semen. —————-
This explains the cases of sudden deaths from joy, fright, pain, grief or such other causes. The sense of a life-task consummated, of the worthlessness of one's existence, if strongly realized, produced death as surely as poison or a rifle-bullet. ”

“ Death may be considered physiologically, pathologically, and psychologically. We are obliged to regard it and speak of it as the uniform correlative, and indeed the necessary consequence, or final result of life ”

“ In short, birth was fortuitous, a product of circumstance plus proximity, its get a biological accident. But death—the taking of life—was a selective process, intentionally executed, the result a foreseen conclusion. ”

“ Thus situated and conditioned, I proceeded to observe and investigate the mysterious processes of dying, and to learn what it is for an individual human spirit to undergo the changes consequent upon physical death or external dissolution. ”

“ It was death—the final earthly end of every living creature—death, the demolition of the human form, the breaking up of the vital functions, the dissolution between soul and body, the one great event that "happeneth to all;" the doom certain, the hour uncertain; coming in infancy, youth, maturity, as often or oftener than in age. ”

“ Finally, he would rend the pericardium, and arrive directly at the heart itself.”
“And kill you!” cried Guy.
“I should die,” I answered composedly, “as men have died after inoculating themselves with the plague; only my death would be more glorious, because incurred for pure science, and in face of a certainty. It is precisely on this account that the act will insure to our names the honor and reverence of all future generations.” ”

“ Such is the series of slow and partial deaths which, with the old man spared by disease, result in the last end of all. The individual who falls into the sleep of eternity in these conditions, dies like the vegetable which, having no consciousness of life, can have no consciousness of death. ”

“ For how can they be after death if they be in death, especially when we do not even call them dying, as we call those in sleep, sleeping; and those in languor, languishing; and those in grief, grieving; and those in life, living? And yet the dead, until they rise again, are said to be in death, but cannot be called dying. ”

“ What enumerator will take for us the census of dead? And this matter of death and dying, like most things else in the world, may be exaggerated by our own fears and hopes. Death, terrible to look forward to, may be pleasant even to look back at. ”

“ Physiological Distinction between Elementary Death and General Death.—We distinguish the death of the anatomical elements, elementary death, from the death of the individual regarded as a whole, general death. Hence we recognize an apparent death, which is an incomplete and temporary suspension of the phenomena of vitality, and a real death, which is a final and total arrest of these phenomena. ”

“ Death, the last disease, is incurable: there is a stronger will than man’s. But he told me of a door of escape. In his last moments he was possessed with a dread that his discovery would perish in the general eclipse of learning which he foresaw as the result of the disappearance of the Byzantine schools, and, with solemn admonition as to its use, he imparted it to me. Death, the mere accident of the flesh, is transferable with the flesh. ”

“ Still further, if we examine the matter more closely, we shall see that even that sore and grievous pain which the dying experience is not death itself. For so long as they have any sensation, they are certainly still alive; and, if still alive, must rather be said to be in a state previous to death than in death. ”

“ Frequently also, in our consideration of another’s death, the kind of death may be an alleviation. For what manglings, what cruelties have we seen, where death was the only remedy, and life was a torment! ”

“ Call the death by any name your Highness will, attribute it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you will, it is the same death eternally—inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only—spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died. ”

“ Death is supposed to be, in every case, the departure of the spirit from the body, and when the sick person is approaching death the friends and relatives, led by the medicine-man, will often sit around the invalid and sing their petitions to the departing spirit in the hope that it may be led to repent and return to the body. ”

“ Death, which after the haemorrhage had appeared as the beautiful winged boy who is so easily mistaken for the god of love—Death, who had incited me to write saucy, defiant verses about him, now confronted me as a hollow-eyed, hideous skeleton. ”

“ Uncertain as it is "when" we shall die, it is equally uncertain "where" we shall die. Shall you die in a sick-bed, fortified with all the last rites of Holy Church; or will death surprise you while you are asleep, or when you are walking out ”

“ Now the meaning of “life” and “death” is manifold, and not always understood in the same way. For as regards the flesh, the energy and motion of the bodily senses is called “life,” and their extinction and dissolution is named “death.” ”

“ Although loss of consciousness, and it is with this that humanitarians are chiefly concerned, is instantaneous, yet death, as evidenced by the cessation of the heart's action, does not take place so rapidly. ”

“ So death passed, that is, a sentence of death was passed, as upon a criminal, dielthen— passed through all men, as an infectious disease passes through a town, so that none escape it. It is the universal fate, without exception: death passes upon all. There are common calamities incident to human life which do abundantly prove this. Death reigned, v. ”

“ Sudden death, unconnected with outward and accidental causes, may occur in various ways. Very violent impressions on the feelings sometimes abruptly check the movements of the heart, and produce a mortal swoon. ”

“ You see, then, how death is caused in drowning; the air is shut out by the water, and the blood is not changed in the lungs; so the blood goes back to the heart dark instead of red, and is sent all over the body. ”

“ Mortification is a word with an interesting etymology. It means literally the dying or more properly the putting to death of one part of an animal body while the rest is alive. From this it has come to mean, to quote the Century Dictionary, "The act of subduing the passions and appetites by penance, abstinence or painful severities inflicted on the body." It has had this signification from the very earliest times of Christianity, for the early Fathers spoke of dying to self to have a higher and a nobler life. ”

“ If to die for Him is life, what pain can we think He had to suffer in the mystery of death, Who rewards with life those who die for Him? Could death make Him fear what could be done to the body, when He exhorted the disciples, Fear not those which kill the body [19] ?
11. Further, what terror had the pain of death for Him, to Whom death was an act of His own free will? In the human race death is brought on either by an attack upon the body of an external enemy, such as fever wound, accident or fall: or our bodily nature is overcome by age, and yields to death. ”

“ And so you would not call him mortal, who hath been for but a short time in the hands of death. Since in this way we may speak of those who sleep, for they are dead, so to say, and without action. But doth death corrupt our bodies? ”

“ Therefore the being which has just been destroyed—the so-called Death—must be supposed to be endowed with a vivifying and quickening influence, which it can communicate to the vegetable and even the animal world. ”

“ And yet what were my pupils doing ten minutes ago but making game of a far worse disease than the plague—the fatal disease of sin? Its spots are blacker, the pain it gives more terrible: often has it caused the death of the body, and, except where repented of and forsaken, the death, the endless death of the soul! Oh, my children! it may be your lot, as it was that mother’s, to be obliged to go out and meet the danger, 97for the Almighty may have seen good to place you in situations of great temptation ”

“ They must die another death after their natural death; the agonies and terrors of the first death will consign them over to the far greater terrors and agonies of eternal death, to die and to be always dying. ”

“ And what we see in others is necessarily only the darker side of death, the cessation of bodily life and of all intercourse with the warm and lively interests of [384] the world. It is a condition exciting tears, and moaning, and grief in those that remain in life; and though these tears arise chiefly from our own sense of loss, yet insensibly we think of the condition of the dead as a state to be bewailed. ”

“ Not one human being in many thousands dies a natural death. If a man be shot or poisoned we say he dies a violent death, but if he is ill, attended by physicians, and dies, we say he dies a ‘natural’ death. ”

“ My flesh shall rest," it is implied that he must put off the body, and therefore must go through the pains of death. It is likewise plainly intimated that his soul must go into a state of separation from the body, and that his body, so deserted, would be in imminent danger of seeing corruption—that he should not only die, but be buried, and abide for some time under the power of death. ”