Last of the Lost

Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin quotes extensively from Doctor Richerand's New Elements of Physiology on the order in which the senses shut down upon the approach of death.

Memory is extinguished next. The dying man, who in his delirium could still recognize those who approached his bedside, now fails to recognize his closest friends and members of his own family. Finally he ceases to feel; but his senses fail in a definite order: taste and smell give no further sign of their existence; a mist veils his eyes, which assume a sinister expression; but his ear remains sensitive to sound. This is doubtless why the ancients, to make sure that life was extinct, used to shout into the ear of the deceased. When the dying man can no longer smell, taste, see, or hear, there remains the sensation of touch, and he stirs restlessly in his bed, stretching out his arms, and constantly changing his position; he makes movements, as we have already remarked, analogous to those of the foetus in its mother's womb. Death is about to strike, but it cannot frighten him, for he has no more ideas; and he finishes life as he began it, unconsciously.

Trans. Anne Drayton The Philosopher in the Kitchen.

Makes one believe that the fulness of eros resides in triggering all one's senses together much like eating with one's fingers.

And so for day 925
25.06.2009