I’ve recently heard that it was a “proven fact” that within the first seven minutes of death, a body loses 21 grams of weight. So, is this true, and if so, why?
Fruitless searches have not yielded me any type of an answer, but there are 22 pages of search results on the SDMB using the word “gram.” Google similarly let me down :(.
I ask this because a new film has just begun shooting which is called “21 Grams,” and the explanation for the title is the question that I’m asking. Granted this explanation came indirectly from a clown called Broso, but when a high-budget film is made about the very subject, I feel I’ve got to ask.
(FWIW, the director of this film seems to be a guy with some real talent – “Amores Perros” was great and done on a budget. Hopefully the attention didn’t ruin him, and he won’t use money to substitute for quality on this new film).
In 1907, Dr. Duncan MacDougall, published an article titled: Hypothesis Concerning Soul Substance Together with Experimental Evidence of The Existence of Such Substance in the jornal American Medicine. In it he claimed that upon dying, a man loses three-eighths to one-half ounce in weight. Art Bell’s site has the article, but there are also several other sources for the information.
I don’t know if anyone has recently tried to reproduce the work, but even if they had, you can be assured that many people’s minds are made up on this one without regard to the presentation of any actual evidence.
I would question the results of anyone who claimed they could accurately measure the the weight of a human being to within an eighth of an ounce. As long as the patient is alive and breathing, their movements are going to cause the reading on the scale to fluctuate. The air in your lungs at any given moment probably weighs more than three-eighths of an ounce.
I can just see it:
Doctor to dying patient “So, hold still now and don’t breath. OK, here we are 83.35Kg. Right. Now, please go on and die but please don’t inhale or exhale while doing it. Ah, good. (checks pulse) Dead. 83.14Kg. That settles it. The soul weigh 21g.”
For the weight to be lost it would have to be material becasue if it was spiritual it would have no weight, just as some people believe spirits can come through a wall or make the sounds of foot prints it is not spirit.
