Death's Schedule

A serious doctor no longer feels like Christ over Lazarus when he makes a dead patient's heart beat again. An injection of adrenalin or a tickle with the electrical pacemaker may do the trick. Or, if the patient is on the operating table with his abdomen or chest open, the surgeon may massage the heart into motion. Nonethe-less this stale medical story still looks like news and is printed, often on front pages a dozen times a year for the bench of those who cannot remember what they read.

Last week the inventor of the electrical pacemaker (TIME, Dec. 19, 1932), Manhattan's ambitious Dr. Albert Solomon Hyman, freshened up that kind of news by attaching thereto a schedule of Death. If the brain and central nervous system are deprived of refreshing blood for eight to twelve minutes, it is useless to try revival, said Dr. Hyman, because, even if the individual's heart is restarted, he will be a hopelessly crippled idiot.

The heart itself does not die beyond recall until Death has held it ten to 20 minutes Other way stations in the schedule ot Death according to Dr. Hyman: skeletal muscle two to four hours; stomach and intestines, six to ten hours; cartilage, ten to 24 hours; bone, 24 to 72 hours; skin (including sweat glands, hair follicles and nails), several days.

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