Cedric Mims: When We Die

Filed under: Book Reviews, Cedric Mims, Death, Science   

Robin Askew

When We Die - Cedric Mims

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The first thing to happen is regurgitation of the stomach contents into the mouth or air passages. At the same time, urine is passed and semen emitted. The skin gets purple on the underside of the body where the blood accumulates, rigor mortis sets in, and the intestinal microbes gobble up the gut and take the opportunity to have a romp around those previously forbidden parts of the body. The pancreas digests itself. Green substances and gas are produced in the tissues, causing the skin to take on a bluish tinge and develop blisters, many of which expand into large sacs of fluid. After four to six days in normal conditions, the body starts to become really unpleasant. The tongue protrudes from between the teeth, the chest swells up, fluid from the lung trickles out of the mouth or nostrils and a "disagreeable odour" develops . . .

Cedric Mims, former Professor of Microbiology at Guy's Hospital, spares no grisly detail in his self-styled "light-hearted but wide-ranging survey of death, the causes of death, and the disposal of corpses". If it's the Afterlife you want, he's not of much use. There's a perfunctory trot through the beliefs that sustain the world's major religions, but Mims' heart isn't really in it. When We Die is shot through with genial atheism, religion impinging only when it has shaped some of the more peculiar things human societies have done with bits and pieces of the deceased. But don't mistake this for a lack of humility. In his introduction, Mims offers this fascinating statistic. Since the emergence of our species, 130,000 million humans have lived and died. You could comfortably pack every last one of us into a mass cubic coffin measuring three miles long on each side and dump it underground without making the slightest impact on the landscape.

Mims contends that we have undergone a reversal in social attitudes since Victorian times. Then, death was a national obsession while sex remained taboo. These days, virtually anything goes on the sexual front but few of us ever see a corpse, since most people die in hospitals or institutions. Anyone who expresses an interest in the subject is routinely accused of "morbid curiosity". While it's difficult to sustain the claim that death is the last taboo, When We Die offers what might be described as a handy palliative. The anecdotal approach makes it ideal for dipping into, serving up themed funereal fun in bite-sized chunks of historical, scientific and cultural information.

Take the section on suicides, for example. Here we learn that in the 18th century the British were thought to have a lax attitude to topping oneself. The French philosopher Montesquieu argued that this was because of the dismal climate and our predisposition to gloominess, which in turn impaired the ability of the body machinery to filter nervous juices. But trustees of Bristol's Clifton Suspension Bridge who fret over how to stop gloomy Brits hurling themselves to a watery doom from Brunel's landmark should consider themselves lucky that we don't share the Japanese enthusiasm for copycat suicides. In 1933, a Japanese schoolgirl threw herself into the mouth of a volcano on the island of Oshima. Over the next two years, 1,208 people followed her. The authorities eventually responded by building a small fence and banning the sale of one-way tickets to the island.

The past, as we know, is a different country. And they certainly did things differently when it came to death. Mims describes the process of classical mummification in all its colourful detail, beginning with the extraction of the brain through the nostrils using a pair of pliers, but also drolly reveals that economy class mummification was available to the Ancient Egyptian lower orders. This ignominious process consisted of pumping cedar oil into the anus and then plugging the hole. Before refrigeration, important folks dying overseas also presented a problem. When the Bishop of Hereford perished in Italy in 1282, his body was chopped into pieces and boiled in vinegar until the fat and flesh separated from the bones. The squidgy bits and bony bits were then sealed in separate leaden cases and shipped back to Blighty, where they received a suitably reverent Westminster funeral.

Modern cultural differences are equally fascinating. Islam dictates that the corpse must not be violated by cremation or dissection, which presents something of a dilemma for medical students in Muslim countries. Consequently, there is now a discreet but roaring trade in infidel stiffs, which are shipped out to Saudi Arabia en masse. Those peaceable Tibetan Buddhists have some interesting rituals too. On a mountain crag near the Ganden monastery in Llasa, a special bunch of holy folks called Body Breakers are employed to chop up corpses to make them more agreeable snacks for the local vulture population.

Only one subject seems to gross out Prof Mims and that's necrophilia, to which he devotes a single meagre paragraph. But it's those peculiar little factoids that stay with you long after you've put down his entertaining tome. Did you know that Lenin gets a week-long bath and a new suit and tie every two years? Or that the British police have seven sniffer dogs trained to detect the gases of decomposition coming from bodies underwater? Or - and this is my favourite - that a company in Wales has just contributed to the sum of human inventiveness by designing a camel cremator for the Dubai government?

Posted on September 1st, 2000.

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