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The first step was detecting death chemically: We know that hundreds of millions of years ago, organisms evolved the ability to sense necromones, molecules emitted by decaying corpses. Passed down to today, this trait has allowed animals, from insects to humans, to protect themselves from hazards associated with carcasses.
- Ancient Times
- The Classical Age
- The Middle Ages
- The Renaissance
- The Eighteenth Century
- The Nineteenth Century
- The Modern Age
Archaeologists have found that as early as the Paleolithic period, about 2.5 million to 3 million years ago, humans held metaphysical beliefs about death and dying—those beyond what humans can know with their senses. Tools and ornaments excavated at burial sites suggest that the earliest ancestors believed that some element of a person survived the...
Mythological beliefs among the ancient Greeks persisted into the classical age. The Greeks believed that after death the psyche (a person's vital essence) lived on in the underworld. The Greek writer Homer (c. eighth century–c. seventh century B.C.) greatly influenced classical Greek attitudes about death through his epic poems the Iliad and the Od...
During the European Middle Ages (c. 500–1485), death—with its accompanying agonies—was accepted as a destiny everyone shared, but it was still feared. As a defense against this phenomenon that could not be explained, medieval people confronted death together, as a community. Because medical practices in this era were crude and imprecise, the ill an...
From the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries, Europe experienced new directions in economics, the arts, and social, scientific, and political thought. Nonetheless, obsession with death did not diminish with this “rebirth”of Western culture. A new self-awareness and emphasis on humans as the center of the universe further fueled the fear of d...
The fear of apparent death that took root in the seventeenth century resurfaced with great intensity during the eighteenth century. Coffins were built with contraptions to enable any prematurely buried person to survive and communicate from the grave. (See Figure 1.1.) For the first time, the Christian church was blamed for hastily burying its “liv...
Premature and lingering deaths remained commonplace in the nineteenth century. Death typically took place in the home following a long deathbed watch. Family members prepared the corpse for viewing in the home, not in a funeral parlor. However, this practice changed during the late nineteenth century, when professional undertakers took over the job...
Modern medicine has played a vital role in the way people die and, consequently, the manner in which the dying process of a loved one affects relatives and friends. With advancements in medical technology, the dying process has become depersonalized, as it has moved away from the familiar surroundings of home and family to the sterile world of hosp...
Jul 16, 2018 · Bodily death, however caused, has effects that anyone can see and take on board. There's the obvious bodily decay. But the most salient change is in the dead person's role as an actor in the physical or social world. They will not be coming back. This is a fact of death that non-human animals with complex social lives can also understand up to ...
- Nicholas Humphrey
- 2018
autopsy, or necropsy or postmortem, Dissection and examination of a dead body to determine cause of death and learn about disease processes in ways that are not possible with the living. Autopsies have contributed to the development of medicine since at least the Middle Ages.
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Oct 17, 2012 · Pansy’s death, in December 2008, sounds peaceful and relatively routine, but in fact it was highly unusual. Captive chimpanzees are rarely allowed to die at “home”; they are usually whisked ...
Oregon, Jan. 17, 2006. June 1, 2007 - Jack Kevorkian Released on Parole. Jack Kevorkian, MD, the pathologist sentenced on Apr. 13, 1999 to 10-25 years in prison for his role in the euthanasia of Thomas Youk is paroled after serving 8 years. "Kevorkian Is Released from Prison," June 1, 2007.
Interest in the cause of death dates back to the Greek physicians of three millennia ago who designated the post-mortem examination as an “autopsy.”. During the period of the Renaissance, gross dissection of the human body became an integral component of medical education in Paris, Padua, and Parma.
