Mendelsohn Theory

When the heart has ceased to beat is the body dead? Certainly many persons have been buried after mere certification that their hearts have ceased to beat. Some have come alive in the dark tomb, only to die unsuccored. May it then be that the heart pulsations are not paramount in sustaining life? Such is the theory advanced last week by Dr. Martin Mendelsohn, holder since 1899 of the Chair of Diseases of the Heart at Berlin University. He declared that other tests than cessation of the heartbeats must be made before certifying a patient dead.

Elaborating his thesis, Dr. Mendelsohn said: "The human body's motive power is represented by the cellular activity of the glands and skin in absorbing and excreting liquids which furnish the requisite fuel for the human motor, whereas the heart and blood circulation merely play a regulative role in distributing such fuel and resulting refuse to and from the various motors throughout the body, namely, the internal, glandular and epidermic cells."

The German press took up discussion of this theory with great vigor last week, one editor declaring that to prevent people from being buried alive in future no body should be buried until "unmistakably decomposed."