Death as an Expression of Functional Disease

Human resuscitation by defibrillation of the cardiac ventricles surely must be considered one of the simple but spectacular advances of 20th century medicine. By this achievement, we are reminded that death is not always the irreversible end stage of remorselessly progressive disease. When the morphologic changes attending the fatal event are minor, restitution of life by corrective measures promptly applied emerges as an intriguing and demanding possibility. In this essay, I have examined a spectrum of fatalities that have as their common feature the absence of causally related organic lesions. Death from functional causes, whether those causes be reflexes gone awry or the will to live gone aglimmering, merits our interest. In these extreme manifestations may reside inferences for the management of more common human afflictions.