rationalskepticism.org

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

rEvolutionist wrote:
Something I've become more interested in of late regarding medicine/philosophy(?) is the concept of "death". The history of being "declared dead"; when exactly (or not) does death occur?; what boundaries does one think medicine will push in the future regarding the point of death. Something like that.

That would be interesting. It would be good to look at the pewter poisoning cases from centuries ago that would induce a state of death in the whiskey drinkers of the town. After discovering claw marks on the inside of numerous coffins during a shifting of the local cemetery, they started putting people on the "graveyard shift" to dig up any graves where the bell would ring (attached by string to the "dead" person's toe) but most would end up as "dead ringers".

Correction: I fucked up. I mixed up the fake story with the real one (Snopes). The term dead ringer comes from horse racing, "dead" meaning "absolute" and "ringer" being a lookalike - so a dead ringer is when a horse is swapped to cheat in the races.

Thanks to TimONeill for correcting my mistake.