Some time ago I watched a program about the building of the infamous Burma railway (bridge on the river Kwai) during WWII.
One allied prisoner was telling how they would carry from camp to camp sick comrades who were too ill to walk themselves.
He recalled how they would carry their comrades on their back, piggy-back style and said you would know when one died, the moment of death, as the weight of the body increased.
Has life got weight? If so it must have substance so why is it so elusive?
Religion would tell you the soul left the body so the soul has weight? Is life (as we know it) the same as “soul”?
If the essence of life has weight why is it so difficult for scientists to duplicate it?
Any one out there in Cecilland have dealings with bodies can confirm or not that Dead Weight is not just an urban myth.
No. People do not weigh either more or less the instant before death than they do following it. It might seem that way to someone carrying a dying person; a live, conscious person tends to shift his weight in motion to maintain balance even while being carried while a dead or unconscious person won’t (well, can’t, really.) This is all the term “dead weight” refers to.
The person doesn’t necessarily have to be unconscious or dead. In the NH where my mother was, there were people who were either paralyzed or, for some reason, couldn’t move anywhere without help. They were very much alive.
No. There is no documented difference in weight that occurs after an organism dies.
It’s elusive because the difference you postulate doesn’t exist.
Most religions would tell you that the soul is not made of matter and so would not have any weight at all. What religion do you know that claims that the soul is a material object?
Not in the sense that most religions define soul.
The “essence of life” has no weight in and of itself. But if it did, why would that make it easier for scientists to duplicate?
Factually, I doubt there’s any difference in the weight. An unconscious person would weigh as much as a dead person, and I’ve never heard anything to argue against that. (Except that 21 grams movie, which I never saw)
But the difference in carrying a conscious person vs carrying an uncounscious person IS noticable. A conscious person, whose weight is being carried by another person, usually tries to help “their carrier” out as much as they can, with regards to weight distribution.
Once they go unconscious, they turn into the same weight as any inorganic matter w/ the same amount of weight, with no conscious effort to make weight adjustments to help out their carrier.
That makes sense. Try carrying a sleeping 3-year-old as opposed to that same 3-year-old awake. The former is like a sack of poatoes, and the latter is like, well, a child. Trust me, I do this every day of my life. People are just more awkward to carry when they aren’t awake.
That’s the example I was going to use. You’re still supporting the child’s entire weight down through your own body, legs and feet onto the ground in either case, but the awake child will maybe wrap his arms over your shoulders and/or slightly grip your torso around the hips with his legs, both of these things saving the strain on your arms. But a sleeping kid? Yep, sack of potatoes (and you’re no doubt using even more arm muscle power trying to steer him through doorways etc without hitting head).
Exactly. I think the OP is confusing two things - the “dead weight” issue of an uncooperative body explained by several posters above, and the “21 grams” myth which suggested that the weight of the body actually decreases slightly at the moment of death.
Neither is true, of course - there is no weight change in either direction, unless you count body fluids that are released, I suppose. Which brings me to a slight hijack. Do people’s, er, sphincters immediately “let go” when they die? Logic tells me they should, in which case you’d presumably know about it if you were carrying a person that died…
Even barely-conscious people will try to “help” you carry them, by shifting their weight. When we move patients from the surgery table, we have to (sometimes quite adamantly) caution them to let us do the work–otherwise they try to shift their weight, and being under sedation, their judgement is off and then we have to work harder to accomodate their movement. Unless the patient is just out cold, it’s almost like he or she can’t help it. There’s probably some name for this phenomenon, but I don’t know what it is.
Thanks all for the replies, Maybe I am confusing weight loss with weight gain, the documentary was some time ago but the narrator did definitely say he could feel a change of weight at the moment of death.
“Colibri” – The idea of life having some weight would I guess I give it substance which can be capture and analyzed and possibly duplicated, as apposed to being something like a mental thought or idea which has no weight or substance and cannot be copied.
I have to disagree with the sleeping child analogy. Having raised 3, and have 7 grand children, and served 28 years in the EMS, there is a difference.
One that sticks(can’t shake it) was a MVA where I thought I had a good hold of a victim to remove from the vehicle to start CPR and ended up with 2 hands full of shirt and jacket. That poor soul flowed like water.
Then there are others that when carrying them from upstairs rooms to main floor was not anything like a sleeping body.
Relaxed is not the same as flaccid!
The term “dead weight” refers to the fact that dead bodies are more difficult to carry. Both dead and live people are heavy and bulky, and this does not change appreciably in the moments after death. But a live person can assist in their own carriage by grasping, staying balanced, or responding to commands. Dead people are notoriously unhelpful in this regard, thus “dead weight”.
With all the NDE reports I’ve seen of people rising up out of their bodies, it is obvious that the soul is lighter than air. Thus, when the soul leaves the body, weight increases.
Here’s where working at a mortuary for all those years pays off:
Dead people don’t weigh more.
If you have to lift one that is limp, they’re difficult to move because they shift and droop while you’re trying to move them.
If you have to lift them during rigor mortis, it’s much easier to move them around.
-Either way it’s much better if you have two people and the deceased is in a place where s/he can just be rolled or slid onto a stretcher.
Sphincters “letting go.”
-IME this doesn’t necessarily happen at the moment of death.
-Perhaps due to the position of the body at death, the fluids and “other materials” are sometimes retained inside the body until you start moving it around and gravity comes into play.
Helpful hint: For the above reason, if you are ever called upon to help carry a dead person down a stairway, take the head end. The dead are customarily carried out feet first, so that will put you “uphill” from the other bearer. Getting pissed on by a corpse may not be the worst thing that ever happened to you, but it’s something that most of you would probably wish to avoid.
My SIL is paralyzed from the neck down due to MS, and although she weighs less than my wife, she is MUCH harder to carry. Arms and legs droop (or stiffen), her head falls; she either slides out of your grasp or you can’t bend her elbow to get her arm out of the way. She’s not dead, but she’s certainly dead weight.