Afterword

Determining the exact time of death (or birth) is very important in forensic medicine. When I was an intern, the first squawk of the baby was registered by the assisting nurse as the time it was born. For twins this is obviously necessary but for single births the time is also material. Consider—if two sisters give birth in the same hour (as has happened in my practice) and the grandfather has left a sum of money to the oldest grandchild, who came first is of decided moment.

As for the time of death, every doctor can testify it is a pain (physically and emotionally) to “pronounce” a patient dead, especially when death occurs at three A.M. or another time equally inconvenient for the attending physician. And yet—when the patient died is important, and not only in detective stories. Did he predecease his wife in a common accident or a mutual suicide pact? Was he alive at the time of death of another person who left him money?

Today, in the sanguinary era of cardiac transplants, the exact time of death is of extreme importance. Already malpractice suits and charges of willful homicide have been brought against doctors who participated in a cardiac transplant operation. Furthermore, now it is possible to maintain the semblance of life (if a vegetable is considered alive) by various artificial measures. A delicate problem in medical ethics has arisen. Is it the duty of the doctor “officiously to keep alive” the hopelessly ill patient? But then who will be the callous judge who will take on himself the responsibility of stopping the intravenouses, the cardiac stimulation, the artificial respiration? A papal statement has decried the unnecessary and meaningless prolongation of what is called life when recovery is hopeless. The Swedish medical authorities have permitted the ending of supportive measures in the same type of cases. Think now—was the patient alive when those measures were instituted or was he dead?

And now we have cryobiologics. Cold-blooded animals have been quick-frozen and have been revived. And lately, a Cuban stowaway successfully survived oxygen deprivation and a temperature hitherto believed to be too low for the maintenance of life.

Maybe the above story isn’t too far out. If human volunteers can be found who will be willing to be frozen and if scientists can be discovered who will experiment on the corpore vili and if the freezing techniques will not be dependent on our present power supply, well, then—