인간 죽음의 원인들

Sherwin B. Nuland. How we die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter. (New York: Vintage books).1995

 

ars moriendi, the art of dying. 

"originally, ars moriendi was a religious and spritual endeavor, described by the fifteenth-century printer William Caxtion as "the craft for to deye for the helthe of mannes sowle."  

아스 모리엔디. 인간 영혼의 건강을 위해 죽는 기술 (기예)

 

그러나 존귀한 죽음의 경우는 드물다. 

 

인간이 죽는 방식은 1만 가지이다.  John Webster's observation , there are indeed "ten thousand several doors for men to take their exits" ; my wish is to help fulfill the prayer of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke : "oh Lord, give each of us his own death." 

 

책에서 다룰 내용. 죽음에 이르는 6가지 질병들 해설.

 

예. The stoppage of circulation,

the inadequate trasport of oxysgen to tissues,

the flickering  out of brain function,

the failure of organs,

the destruction of vital centers,

 

 

....Death hath then thousand several doors For men to take their exits. - John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, 1612.

 

 

p.8. Poets, essayists, chroniclers, wags, and wise men write often about death but have rarely seen it. Physicians and nurses, who see it often, rarely write about it. 

 

 

p.10. 

"Death with dignity" is our soceity's expression of the universal yearing to achieve a graceful triumph over the stark and often repugnant finality of life's last sputterings.

 

But the fact is, death is not a confrontation. It is simply an event in the sequence of nature's ongoing rhytims. 

Not death but disease is the real enemy, diesese the malign force that requires confrontation.

 

Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost. 

 

 

The Strangled Heart. 

p.11.

James McCarty's heart died because it was not getting enough exygen; it was not getting enough exygen because it was not getting enough hemoglobin, the blood-borne protein whose function is to carry the oxygen; it was not getting enough hemoglobin because it was not getting enough blood; it was not getting enough blood because the heart's nourishing vessels, the coronary arteries, were hardened and narrowed by a process called arteriosclerosis (literally, hardening of the arteries)

 

심장이 멎은 이유. 산소 부족이다.

왜 산소가 부족했는가? 헤모글로빈이 충분하지 않아서이다. 헤모글로빈은 피 속에 있는 단백질이고, 산소를 실어 나르는 역할을 한다. 

심장이 멈춘 이유는 헤모글로빈이 부족해서이고, 헤모글로빈이 부족한 이유는 피가 부족해서이다.

심장에 피가 부족한 이유는, 당연히 피의 공급이 부족해서이고, 이는 피 공급을 담당하는 심장의 관상 동맥이 제 역할을 하지 못해서이다.  이 관상 동맥이 단단해져 굳어져 버리거나 관이 좁아지면  피 돌기가 원활하지 않게 된다. 이것을 '동맥 경화증 arteriosclerosis 아터리오스클러로우시스)'라고 한다.

 

동맥 경화증 원인은 잘못된 식습관, 흡연, 운동 부족, 고혈압, 타고 태어난 유전 등이다. 

 

 

 

 

 

Francisco Goya. 

Diphteria or The Croup.

El Garrotillo