The Whole Death Catalog

by Harold Schechter

  When a corpse is dumped in water, it floats face down. During the first 12 hours, the muscles lock in place, starting with the head and ending with the toes. During the next day or so, that rigor mortis reverses itself; from toes to head, the muscles relax. The skin toughens and pimples. This is called goose-skin, or anserina cutis. Then, it becomes swollen and wrinkled, a phenomenon named maceration, or washer-woman’s skin. As bacteria start eating away at body tissue, the corpse, now a greenish-red hue, starts emitting a putrid odor. By the third day, gas pockets form internally, causing the stomach to swell. That can split the skin open and form cracks through which greenish-bronze and reddish-brown fluids seep. The water, even if shallow, forces the victim’s hands and feet to balloon. Soon, portions of the outer layer of skin will separate from the underlying tissues and slide off. By day 10 postmortem, the fingernails and more skin start peeling off, body hair starts falling out and silt will have found its way into the airways, lungs and stomach. The body has turned greenish-black. If it’s left there for more than a month, the layer of fat beneath the skin will take on a soaplike texture and ooze from the body.

  Or—as Dr. Kenneth V. Iserson so succinctly puts it in his definitive 1994 book, Death to Dust—a few weeks in water will turn you into “an ugly smelly mess.”

  DEATH DEFINITION: Adipocere

  ONE OF THE ICKIER CHANGES THAT THE HUMAN BODY MAY UNDERGO DURING THE PUTREFACTION PROCESS is the conversion of body fat into a substance known as adipocere or grave wax. Produced by the interaction of fatty tissue, bacterial enzymes, and moisture, adipocere is most frequently found on cadavers that have been immersed in water or buried in wet soil for extended periods. It varies in color from grayish white to yellow or even brown. Depending on various factors, it can have the consistency of grease, semisoft cheese, or coarse soap. It tends to smell like rank cheese.

  Bodies that are not exposed to air, insects, or scavengers will start to form adipocere within a month of death, generally on those parts of the body that contain the most fat—the cheeks, breasts, buttocks, and abdomen. Because adipocere formation (aka saponification) slows further decomposition, bodies that undergo this process do not turn into skeletons but into bloated, waxy-looking, thoroughly hideous “soap mummies.”

  For more on this (supremely unappetizing) subject, including images of saponified cadavers, go to www.adipocere.homestead.com, a self-described website “about the soapy, waxy substance many of us will one day become.” Also recommended: Christine Quigley’s book, Modern Mummmies: The Preservation of the Human Body in the Twentieth Century (McFarland, 1996).

  If you want to see an actual specimen up close, you can take a trip to the famed Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, where a female corpse known as the “Soap Lady” has been on display for more than a century.

  Putrefaction:

  A Handy Guide

  How do you know when somebody is putrefying? Here are the twelve major signs as identified by John Glaister and Edgar Rentoul in their standard text, Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology (Livingstone, 1966):

  A greenish color appears in the lower right abdomen, then gradually spreads.

  The face darkens and swells.

  The genitals darken and swell.

  The abdomen bloats with fetid gases.

  Putrid blisters form on the skin.

  The blisters burst and the skin begins to peel off in large, irregular patches.

  Bloodstained fluid issues from the mouth and nostrils.

  The eyeballs liquefy.

  Maggots appear.

  The nails and hair come off.

  The abdominal and thoracic cavities burst open.

  The tissues dissolve into a semiliquid mass.

  There is to be a feast. The rich table has been set. The board groans. The guests have already arrived, numberless bacteria that had, in life, dwelt in saprophytic harmony with their host. Their turn now! Charged, they press against the membrane barriers, break through the new softness, sweep across the plain of tissue, devouring, belching gas…. Blisters appear upon the skin, enlarge, blast, leaving brownish puddles in the declivities. You are becoming gravy.

  —RICHARD SELZER

  ASK DR. DEATH

  Dear Dr. Death:

  I’ve always heard that a person’s hair and nails keep growing after death. How long do they get? I mean, let’s say some guy with a crew cut dies and gets buried. If you dug up his corpse a year later, would he have really long hair? And claws? That would be really creepy!

  Just Wondering About

  Postmortem Hair and Nail Growth

  Dear Just Wondering:

  You’re right, that would be creepy. It would also be impossible. The phenomenon you refer to is just an optical illusion. What really happens is that as a corpse dehydrates, the skin retracts around the hair and nails, making them jut out more prominently. In other words, the hair and nails aren’t growing; the flesh is shriveling.

  “Ghastly Gropings in the

  Decay of Graves”

  Human decomposition has rarely been portrayed as graphically—not to say sickeningly—as in this short newspaper piece by famed author Lafcadio Hearn who, early in his career, worked as a reporter for The Cincinnati Enquirer, where this article appeared on August 26, 1874.

  It may be remembered that a Floater was found Friday and hauled ashore near the Two-mile House. The said Floater was in a horrible condition when stranded; the fishes had devoured the cheeks and left the ghastly grinning teeth exposed; the eyeballs were rolled up so as only to show staring spheres of blood-shot yellow-white; the whole body was enormously puffed up, monstrously swollen, covered with gigantic blisters, revolting and unrecognizable, bearing more resemblance to a vast unshelled turtle than to a human body. Coroner Maley, however, succeeded in identifying it at an Inquest, while the jurymen stood afar off with handkerchiefs to their noses; and the friends of the deceased had the remains subsequently exhumed from Potters’ Field and buried in the family lot at Spring Grove.

  On Monday evening, however, the widow of the deceased called on the Coroner and begged him to accompany her to the cemetery, as she was intending to have the body exhumed, fearing some mistake had been made, and she wanted Dr. Maley to identify the corpse, if possible, which had by that time been two days underground. The Coroner consented, and performed the gruesome duty yesterday afternoon with a degree of nonchalance which would put a ghoul to the blush. On opening the coffin the frightful, acrid, far-reaching stench drove all but the undaunted Coroner from the scene of the action. He, shielding his nose with a pocket handkerchief, and arming his right hand with a glove, set to work without a shudder among the writhing swarms of white vermin which were preying on the decomposing remains. The body had by that time become far more hideous to look upon, the eyes having fallen out, and the protruding tongue crumbling into black rottenness. Nevertheless, the Coroner plunged his gloved hand in the hideous orifice to examine the teeth, and inspected the foul mass of sweltering, shrinking corruption for marks of identification, while the livid worms traveled all over his broadcloth and tried to ring themselves about his fingers. Then, having succeeded in identifying the corpse to the satisfaction of everybody, he trotted home and ate a hearty dinner. Such is the stuff that Coroners’ stomachs are made of.

  ISN’T IT IRONIC?

  Shortly before noon on April 26, 1932, the famous American poet Hart Crane committed suicide by leaping from the deck of a steamship just off the Florida coast and drowning before anyone could throw him a life preserver.

  Ironically, Crane’s father, Clarence—a successful confectioner from Cincinnati—is famed as the inventor of one of America’s most popular candies: the Life Saver!

  What a Way to Go

  Did you know that the famous American author Sherwood Anderson was killed by an hors d’oeuvre? (He swallowed a cocktail frank at a party without removing the toothpick and died a week later of peritonitis). Or that a California motorist was killed in 1999 when a
flying cow—propelled through the air after being hit by another vehicle—crashed through the windshield of his pickup? Or that the fumes from diacetyl, an ingredient in artificial butter flavoring, have caused the deaths of several dozen popcorn factory workers?

  These are just a few of the wild and wacky ends described by Michael Largo in his cheerfully macabre volume, Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die (Harper, 2006). Arranged alphabetically according to cause of death—from airbags and alligators to yawning and zoöfatalism (a psychological compulsion to get too close to zoo animals)—Largo’s book is the definitive guide to the infinite variety of ways that humans have expired. You’ll come away convinced that the Grim Reaper is endowed not only with an endlessly fertile imagination but also with a really sick sense of humor. (How else to explain the reputed 1999 death of an Australian circus dwarf named Od who, while performing on a trampoline, accidentally landed in the mouth of a yawning hippopotamus, which swallowed him whole? Or the 1981 fatal immolation of a middle-aged Detroit man whose toupee came off at a disco and who, while trying to stick it back on, accidentally ignited the glue with his cigarette?)

  If Largo’s book doesn’t fully satisfy your appetite for tasty death anecdotes, you can always try They Went That-a-Way: How the Famous, the Infamous, and the Great Died (Ballantine, 1989) by the late publishing mogul Malcolm Forbes. Consisting of more than 150 alphabetically arranged capsule biographies, Forbes’s collection will fill you in on the final moments of luminaries from Aeschylus (“killed when an eagle mistook his shiny bald head for a rock and dropped a tortoise on it to crack the shell”) to John Jacob Astor to Virginia Woolf (“forced a large stone in her coat pocket” and walked into the Ouse River).

  A Grim Fairy Tale

  They don’t call them the Brothers Grimm for nothing. Though most people think of fairy tales as charming little kiddie stories that end happily ever after, many deal with tragedy, sorrow, violence, and death.

  In “Death’s Messenger,” one of the lesser-known tales from the Grimm brothers’ world-famous collection, Death is defeated in a wrestling match by a giant. As Death lies panting by the side of the road, a strong and healthy young man wanders by, gives him a refreshing drink of water, and helps him to his feet.

  In gratitude, Death promises that—though he can spare no one, including his young helper—he will never sneak up on him. Instead, he will send his messengers to let the man know far in advance when Death is coming. And so the young man goes on his merry way, reassured that he will never die until he receives a warning from Death’s messengers.

  He enjoys himself and lives a happy, carefree life. “But youth and health did not last long,” the story continues. “Soon came sickness and sorrows, which tormented him by day and took away his rest by night. ‘Die, I shall not,’ said he to himself, ‘for Death will send his messengers before that, but I do wish these wretched days of sickness were over.’ As soon as he felt himself well again, he began to live merrily.

  “Then one day someone tapped him on the shoulder. He looked around and Death stood behind him and said: ‘Follow me, the hour of your departure from this world has come.’ ‘What,’ replied the man, ‘will you break your word? Did you not promise me that you would send your messengers to me before coming yourself?’ ‘Silence!’ answered Death. ‘Have I not sent one messenger to you after another? Did not fever come and smite you, and shake you, and cast you down? Has dizziness not bewildered your head? Did not your ears ring? Did not toothache bite into your cheek? Was it not dark before your eyes? And besides that, has not my own brother Sleep reminded you every night of me? Did you not lie by night as if you were already dead?’ The man could make no answer; he yielded to his fate and went away with Death.”

  “The Good Death”: Achievable Goal

  or Contradiction in Terms?

  Defining a “bad death” is a pretty straightforward affair. In his classic study Discipline and Punish, for example, French philosopher Michel Foucault describes at great and grisly length the 1757 execution of one Robert François Damiens for the attempted assassination of King Louis XV. As Foucault tells it, Damiens, after being conveyed to a public square, had the flesh torn from various parts of his body with a red-hot pincer. Then molten lead was poured on the wounds. Then his right hand was scalded with boiling oil. Then his limbs were ripped off by horses. Then his still-living head and trunk were tossed onto a flaming pyre.

  Now that’s a bad death.

  Defining a “good death,” however, is much trickier. For one thing, different people have different opinions on the subject. If avoiding protracted agony is your criterion for a good death, then being killed instantly in a major traffic accident might fit the bill. Clearly, however, many people would regard such an end as a horrible tragedy.

  And then there are cultural variations. Being ripped to pieces by ravenous beasts wouldn’t strike most of us as a particularly good death. But in the 1958 movie The Vikings, the captive chieftain Ragnar is perfectly happy to get tossed into a pit filled with half-starved wild dogs as long as he can hold on to his sword and go down swinging—a bit of Hollywood hokum, no doubt, but nevertheless an accurate reflection of the manly ethos of the Norsemen, a warrior culture in which dying gloriously in battle was as good as it got.

  In our own culture, the concept of a good death can be traced back to the work of renowned psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, whose groundbreaking 1969 best seller, On Death and Dying, became the bible of the contemporary “death awareness” movement. In her studies of the terminally ill, Kübler-Ross famously identified five stages that people presumably pass through as they move toward death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

  In this scheme, a good death means that you don’t get stuck in any of the earlier phases but succeed in reaching the final one, a full and mature acceptance of death as a natural and inevitable part of life. In this way, the individual is able to take charge of his final days—to wrest control from the uncaring grip of a faceless medical establishment and die with dignity and humanity, in a manner and place of his own choosing.

  Researchers inspired by Kübler-Ross’s work have identified six basic components of a good death, all of which involve the active and fully aware participation of the moribund patient:

  Preparation. To know when death is coming and to understand what you can expect.

  Treatment control. To have a say in medical decisions, including the right to refuse life-prolonging procedures.

  Pain and symptom management. To be assured of adequate relief of suffering at the end.

  Surroundings. To choose the place of death (home, hospice, etc.) and decide who will be present.

  Completion. To take care of “unfinished business,” both practical and emotional. This includes putting your affairs in order, settling unresolved conflicts, spending time with friends and loved ones, and saying a proper goodbye.

  Affirmation. Studies suggest that people nearing death are comforted by a sense that their lives have had meaning to themselves and others.

  For all the current talk about a good death, however, the fact is that there is no right way to die. Some people leave this world with a smile; others go kicking and screaming.

  For the most part, of course, we prefer to see our loved ones die peacefully. But that often has more to do with us than with them. As psychiatrist N. H. Cassem points out, “There is a danger that our expectations of others are selfish rather than altruistic. Some want others to grow old quietly, not because there is anything especially good about that, but only so the old won’t be a nuisance. So, too, there is a danger we may want others to die quietly, instead of angrily, because it makes us more comfortable. There is no such thing as a best way to die. Dying must have as many styles as living.”

  In other words—to quote Dylan Thomas—while some people “go gentle into that good night,” others (following the poet’s own advice) “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

 
RECOMMENDED READING

  Based on six years of extensive research, Marilyn Webb’s sweeping The Good Death: The New American Search to Reshape the End of Life (Bantam, 1999) concludes that the modern way of dying relies far too heavily on exotic life-prolonging technology while stinting on palliative care. Her conclusions are reinforced by Dr. Ira Byock, whose book Dying Well: The Prospect for Growth at the End of Life (River-head, 1998) offers practical guidance on how to enjoy life even in the face of death.

  In March 2006, the BBC ran a two-part program called How to Have a Good Death. The accompanying website offers much useful information, including a practical checklist and a handsome downloadable booklet, Planning for a Good Death. The Web address is: www.bbc.co.uk/health/tv_and_radio/how_to_have_a_good_death.

  He that begins to live, begins to die.

  —FRANCIS QUARLES

  Mortuary Hall of Fame:

  Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

  Though no one disputes her pioneering contributions to the contemporary “death awareness” movement or her revolutionary impact on the way the terminally ill are treated by the medical profession, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s once exalted reputation has taken a hit in the years since her own demise in 2004.