death

death cessation of all life (metabolic) processes. Death may involve the organism as a whole (somatic death) or may be confined to cells and tissues within the organism. Causes of death in human beings include injury, acute or chronic disease, and neoplasia (cancer). The physiological death of cells that are normally replaced throughout life is called necrobiosis; the death of cells caused by external changes, such as an abnormal lack of blood supply, is called necrosis.

Somatic death is characterized by the discontinuance of cardiac activity and respiration, and eventually leads to the death of all body cells from lack of oxygen, although for approximately six minutes after somatic death—a period referred to as clinical death—a person whose vital organs have not been damaged may be revived. However, achievements of modern biomedical technology have enabled the physician to artificially maintain critical functions for indefinite periods.

Somatic death is followed by a number of irreversible changes that are of legal importance, especially in estimating the time of death. These include rigor mortis , livor mortis (discoloration of the body due to settling of blood), algor mortis (cooling of the body), autolysis (breakdown of tissue by enzymes liberated by that tissue after death), and putrefaction (invasion of the body by organisms from the gastrointestinal tract).

Brain death, which is now a legal condition in most states for declared death, requires that the following be absent for at least 12 hours: behavioral or reflex motor functions above the neck, including pupillary reflexes to testing jaw reflex, gag reflex, response to noxious stimuli, and any spontaneous respiratory movement. Purely spinal reflexes can remain. If the patient has agreed to be an organ donor, the observation period can be shortened to 6 hours.

As a result of recent refinements in organ transplantation (see transplantation, medical ) techniques, the need has arisen to more precisely define medical death. The current definition is that of a 1981 U.S. presidential commission, which recommended that death be defined as "irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem," the brain stem being that part of the brain that controls breathing and other basic body functions. Some feel, however, that people in persistent vegetative states, i.e., people who have brain-stem function but have lost higher brain functions (vision, abstract thought, personality), should be considered dead and allowed, through living wills or relatives, to donate organs.

See euthanasia ; funeral customs ; vital statistics .

Bibliography: See E. Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying (1969); S. B. Nuland, How We Die (1994).

death The permanent cessation of living functions within an organ or organism.

death often (as Death) represented in art and literature as a skeleton or an old man holding a scythe, the personification of the power that destroys life.
death in the pot a biblical phrase, from the story of a famine during which a pottage containing poisonous herbs was made by Elisha's servant for the sons of the prophets; when they cried out, ‘O thou man of God, there is death in the pot’ (2 Kings 5:40), Elisha added meal to the dish, and they were able to eat it safely.
death is the great leveller all people will be equal in death, whatever their material prosperity. The saying is recorded in English from the early 18th century, but the Alexandrian-born Latin poet Claudian (370–c.404) has, ‘omnia mors aequat [death levels all things].’
death knell the tolling of a bell to mark someone's death; in figurative usage, referring to the imminent destruction or failure of something.
death-or-glory brave to the point of foolhardiness (in the British Army, the Death or Glory Boys was a nickname for the 17th Regiment of Lancers, from the regimental badge of a death's head with the words ‘or glory’).
death pays all debts the death of a person cancels out their obligations. The first recorded use is in Shakespeare's Tempest (1611); earlier in 2 Henry IV (1597), Shakespeare has, ‘The end of life cancels all bands [bonds].’
death row especially with reference to the US, a prison block or section for prisoners sentenced to death.
death's head a human skull as an emblem of mortality.
death wish an unconscious desire for one's own death.
till death us do part for as long as each of a couple live, from the marriage service in the Book of Common Prayer.

See also Black Death at black, dance of death, dice with death, a fate worse than death, the kiss of death, nothing is certain but death and taxes.