Sunday, January 18, 2009

Approaching Death

GruntDoc highlights this interesting post from Aggravated DocSurg called Four Horsemen of a Trauma Death.

It talks about exactly what might be happening in and to your body if you happen to get drunk and drive your car into a tree on a cold winter's night (as so many of us do), using the Four Horsemen of Hemorrhage, Hypothermia, Time, and Death to cover the details.

It reminded me of Peter Stark's grim but fascinating book Last Breath, which similarly covers the details of what's going on physiologically as humans die from various causes. What's going on as you freeze to death? Die of dehydration? Weaken from scurvy?

There's something very compelling about the idea of knowing and understanding these points. Partly, I guess, the demystification makes the process seem less scary (not that I personally would probably be any calmer if I were actually about to expire from heatstroke or something). It's still not desirable, but it makes sense. We like things to make sense.

And partly, it's just wildly amazing how things work, and exactly how they come apart if they're not working anymore. Biological processes are so fascinating. 

And gross. Very, very gross. 

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