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THE MYTHOLOGY OF DYING

JOHN H. BURGESS

Most religious doctrines have a strong influence on how we view the death process. Emphasis is usually on going to another realm or world with at least one myth of someone returning to life.

While death is seen as a journey to another place, the dead usually cannot make the journey back. Native American mythology, for example, explains it as due to the difficulty of catching the spirit to unite with the body. Most religions agree that re-uniting the spirit with the body is generally possible only for the gods.

Since death has always been explained chiefly by religious mythology, it has only been in modern times that a more realistic understanding of the dying process has become possible.

The Myth of Dead and Re-born Deities. A major element in most mythologies about the gods is in the life-death-rebirth phase of a god’s existence, also known as a “dying-and-rising” god. This relates to all the divinities in world mythologies or religions who are born, suffer death or other death-like experiences, pass a phase in the underworld among the dead, and then are born again. These include the deities of Osiris, Adonis, Jesus and Mithra. Female deities included are Inanna and Persephone.

Major life-death-and-resurrection myths were closely linked to the cycle of seasons, as when Athenian women planted “gardens of Adonis,” and when the young green growth withered in the heat of the summer, and they wept for the dead god. Aristotle interpreted the origin of the myth as an explanation of natural seasonal phenomena. Such reductionistic interpretations were apparently oversimplified. Stoic Romans, such as Cicero and Seneca, explained the myths and festivals of Attis, Adonis and Persephone in naturalistic terms. The abduction and return of Persephone, according to Cicero, was symbolic of the planting and growth of crops.

Others, such as freethinker Richard Payne Knight in the 18th century, explained all religious phenomena in terms of solar activity. Thus the tribulations of Jesus and Osiris represented the course of the sun through the day, night and dawn. Naturalist hypothesis were also formulated by James Frazer and Jane Ellen Harrison and their fellow Cambridge ritualists. In their works, The Golden Bough, and Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Frazer and Harrison argued that all myths are echoes of rituals which have their primordial purpose in the manipulation of natural phenomenon in a kind of sympathetic magic. The rape -and-return-of-Persephone myth, and the rending and repair of Osiris, the travails and triumph of Baldur, would all be rooted in primitive rites to renew the fertility of withered land and crops.

Greek and Roman Mythologies. In the evolution of modern died-and-born-again religions, most of the Greek deities were adopted by the Romans though there was often a change in name. It was from these that the elaborate theology of the dead-and-arisen Christ was developed in story and worship. The foundation of the Christian religion in Rome was forged in a dismal pool of blood and misery. In achieving dominance over all the other pagan religions, the Christian authorities sanctioned the use of sword, fire and torture to spread and enforce the dogma. Chief among the precepts of the Christian religion was the doctrine of “Holy Ghost.” The latter was the third person in the trinity, the first being the father, or God himself, the second, the persecuted, died and arisen savior, Jesus, with the third person being the mysterious holy spirit of Jesus and God in death and the rising of the spirit. This “born-again” precept is the mystical and mythological religious doctrine about death that has survived even to this day.

The Biology of Death. Up until around the 16th century, mythology predominated in the declaration and definition of death. In the second century, the physician Galen mapped the body by dissecting animals and studying the wounds of gladiators. Andreas Vesalius, in 1514, lectured on anatomy at the University of Padua, and began to sketch his dissection of human cadavers. He found that people did not necessarily have the same animal organs described by Galen. The heart was still thought to be the source of thoughts and feelings. In 1600 the young English doctor William Harvey at Padua discovered that the heart “sends blood though the body in a loop” and functions basically as a pump. Such an observation created philosophical shockwaves throughout the medical and religious worlds. Harvey served as a physician for King Charles l, whose friend, Viscount Montgomery, had fallen from a horse when he was a boy. It left a gap in his ribs that had been subsequently covered with a removable metal plate, which was removed for Harvey’s observations. Harvey wrote that he was able to observe Montgomery’s beating heart, but was unable, to persuade his peers of this phenomenon.

Harvey taught his theories at the university. Among his students was the young Thomas Willis, who had given up his pursuit of a career in the Church for medicine. Harvey now had his disciples, who helped him trace the course of blood through the body. Willis was able to track the flow of blood to the brain. In pondering the functions there, Willis gave the first account of the network of nerves and and blood vessels, which brought a new understanding of the brain.

Signs of Death. In 1742, John Bruhier documented numerous examples of live burial in his book, Dissertation del’ ‘inacertitude des signes de la mort, which created more public concern about being buried alive. The net result was to pressure doctors to come up with more reliable signs of death. Some doctors, at the time, concluded that the only reliable sign of death was putrefaction. Hence, a number of practitioners required a longer period between death and burial to allow for putrefaction to occur. Various devices were designed, among then was the “safety coffin” that permitted the deceased to signal the world above for help.

Among the early Greeks and Romans, the signs of death were in the absence of heartbeat and breath. The onset of putrefaction was a sure sign. A candle was held at the nose and mouth where no flicker was a sign of death. Anatomist Jacques-Benigne Winslow, in 1740, recommended resuscitation be attempted on lifeless patients by stimulating various parts of the body with the juices of onions, garlic and horseradish, or with whips and nettles, or by startling shrieks and loud noises. Pins inserted under the toenails were also tried.

A classical point of departure for death lies in the unequivocal transition from life to death. A person is not truly dead, this view holds, until the proper rituals have been completed in religion and burial.

Physical Death. In physical death, cessation of normal body functions are involved. Legal terms now define death largely in brain death or loss of higher cortical-cognitive functions—the irreversible loss of consciousness, arousal to wakefulness and bodily awareness.

Before it was found that the heart could be resuscitated, it was assumed that death occurred when the heart ceased to beat. Then with the possibility of resuscitation, it appeared that death might be a coma, overdose or shock. Such a concern in the 19th century was what caused people to watch the deceased for signs of life over a period of days, and for crypts or coffins to be designed for escaping.

Objective Perspectives on Death. With the advent of an increasing knowledge of animal and human physiology, the criterion of death became more objective and explicit. For example, after the development of defibrillators, artificial respirators and the use of organ transplants, it was concluded that only the brain could not be subjected to replacement. Then the focus became centered on the brain as the vital structure that separated life from death.

Now the legal definition of death, in most states, requires “irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem.”

The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, in 1980, formulated the Uniform Determination of Death Act, which states that an individual who has sustained either: (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead.

The above definition was approved by the American Medical Association and by the American Bar Association. All fifty states and the District of Columbia follow this as the legal standard.

Some Clinical Signs of Brain Death. As a chief criterion of death, brain death refers to cerebral-motor responses being absent. Spinal reflexes often occur in young people in the motion of legs and arms, and in stretching, grasping or walking. Brain-stem reflexes involve such actions as dilating of pupils and maintaining regular shapes of the pupils. In death these and pupil-light reflexes are absent.

In death there is disconjugate eye movement, with no eye movement when stimulated by the vestibular (balance) ocular region. Jaw, gag and cough reflexes are absent. There is a loss of centrally-controlled breathing. The electroencephalogram shows no electrical current. There are no auditory responses. Brain death is irreversible, with lost thinking, awareness and communicability due to massive head trauma, with swelling and intracranial hemorrhage. Brain death implies a universal show of clinical signs, while “time of death” is taken to be the time when the brain-death criteria have all been met.

In some instances, spinal-cord reflexes may still occur. The use of neuromuscular blocking agents, for example, may confound motor testing in patients with brain death. Irregularly shaped pupils are compatible with brain death. Most pupils are midsize, but dilated pupils may still occur in the presence of brain death, when sympathetic cervical pathways to the papillary dilator muscle are intact. Coordinated ocular movements are also absent in brain death. The normal response, for example, is for the eyes to turn together to the opposite side from the turn of the head. In death, the eyes do not turn in a conjugate manner, i.e. the eyes do not turn as the position of the head is changed.

In cases where encephalitic babies are born, without the highly evolved parts of the brain, but have beating hearts and functioning organs, further questions are raised about what constitutes life, or what defines death. for the functioning of normal human beings, brain activity is considered to be a necessary condition to being alive. In the U.S., once brain death has been established, no criminal or civil liability would be adjudicated when disconnecting life-support devices.

The neocortex of the brain is considered necessary for consciousness, and only electrical activity there is essential in defining death. The criterion of death is, thus, the permanent and irreversible loss of cognitive function, evidenced when death of the cerebral cortex occurs. Then all hope of recovering thought and personality is gone.

In most jurisdictions, conservative definitions of death is considered the cessation of electrical activity of the whole brain, and not just in the neocortex. The latter adopted in the Uniform Determination of Death Act in the United States. In this, it is widely known for life-support augmentation, that oxygen deprivation for about seven minutes is sufficient to kill the cerebral cortex. However, electroencephalograms can show spurious electrical impulses when done exist; and there have been cases in which electrical activity has been too minimal to detect. Hospitals often have elaborate procedures for determining death at widely separated intervals.

First respondents cannot assume death unless there is clear and obvious indications, such as mortal decapitation, rigor mortis (rigidity of the body), liver mortis, (blood pooling in the part of the body at lowest elevation), decomposition, incineration and other bodily damage that is clearly inconsistent with life.

In electrocution, cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) administered for over an hour or longer can allow stunned nerves to recover and an apparently dead person can survive. Those found unconscious under icy water may survive if their faces are kept continuously cold until they arrive at an emergency room. This is known as the “diving response,” in which metabolic activity and oxygen requirements are minimal. This we share with whales, dolphins and other mammals in the mammalian diving reflex.

With the improvement of medical technologies, the occurrence of death may be reevaluated when a person’s vital signs are restored after long periods of apparent death, as in the cessation of a heartbeat, which is now seen as an inadequate decisive indicator of death. Likewise, the lack of electrical brain activity as a sole criterion of death, may have to be reevaluated when pronouncing someone as truly dead.

Cognition Impairment and Death. Not only do we lack a clear-cut understanding of death, we continue to struggle to lessen the fear of death by understanding  it better; but the very nature of our lives is predicated on the operation of our cognitive ability. The latter is suspended in death; still we know somewhat more about the suspension of cognition from our study of the sleep process; but cognition is, after all, what makes us, in life, the sensitive and knowing creatures that we are.

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