Electrocardiography has increased our knowledge of the human heart in health and disease. Its usefulness does not end here, for we may proceed further and investigate the heart in the last moments of life and even after life has apparently ceased. The phenomena of clincal death, as manifested by the cessation of respiration and audible heart sounds, have been observed repeatedly. That cardiac activity does not cease simultaneously with clinical death and that, in certain instances, it continues for a prolonged period is best revealed by the electrocardiograph.
Since the original work of Rhomer1 in 1911, various observers2 have described the sequence of events occurring in electrocardiograms taken during the last moments of life. Turner,3 in a recent review of the literature, collected sixty-five cases in which electrocardiograms were taken during death. To this series he added five cases. We are reporting in abstract twenty cases in