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Show Life After Death. Dr. Richardson, according to the Popular Popu-lar Science Monthly, has recently propounded pro-pounded a rather startling question, "May not life be restored to the body after af-ter actual death?" As men now understand under-stand the theory of life the response must be in the negative. But Richardson cites some testimony that gives ground for an affirmative answer. Thus by combining com-bining artificial circulation with artificial respiration, a dog was restored to life an hour and five minutes after having - been killed by an overdose of chloroform, and the heart having become perfectly still and cold and was passing into rigidity. Again, animals that have been killed by suffocation and partially dissected were brought to such a state of muscular irritability irrita-bility that the experiment was stopped for fear that they would return to conscious, sentient life. Frogs poisoned by nitrate ' of amyl were restored after nine days of apparent death, and in one case after signs of putrefactive change had commenced. com-menced. The action of peroxide of hydrogen hy-drogen in reanimating the blood and restoring re-storing heat in a really dead body is quite startling. From these observations W. Mattieu Williams thinks the conclusion is justifiable that "a drowned or suffocated suffo-cated man is not hopelessly dead so long as the bodily organs remain uninjured by violence or disease, and the blood remains re-mains sufficiently liquid to be set in motion mo-tion artificially and supplied with a little oxygen to start the chemical movements of life." Of course until science has actually brought to life a human body that has been actually dead, that is, from the state which we define to be death, the whole subject must be one of speculation. But assuming that the theory is possible of demonstration, and that one, in whom the circulation of the blood, and the pulsations pul-sations of the heart have actually ceased, and the breathing of air into the lungs has come to an end one from whom consciousness has departed and in whom sensation has ceased assuming that in such a body life may be revived and consciousness con-sciousness restored, what becomes of the doctrine that the body is dependent for its vitality, not alone to physical conditions, but to occupancy by the immaterial part the soui? If that has once severed its relation to the body, and life may be restored, it involves the rehabilitation of the casket with the essence es-sence of life, intelligence, thought, reason and all other soul attributes. Of course, it is profitless to speculate upon a mere theory of this kind, but when an approach is made to restoration of life symptoms, it is at least well to be kept informed of the theories of science and the groping for supposed new truths. But in this case the reasonableness of the belief in the soul, in its immortality, and in its severance sever-ance from the body at death, gives the lie to even the possibility of science ever restoring life to the body which has been once dead. Sacramento Record- Union. |