Terminal lucidity is a phenomenon in which some very sick person believed to be very close to death or with a very damaged brain or demented mind suddenly shows a brief period of intellectual clarity before dying from his disease. This often can occur after a long period of stupor or mental incapacity.
In a previous post I included an image of a 1936 article mentioning cases of terminal lucidity. I should quote the entire text, particularly for any readers reading this blog in a non-English version (as you can do using the Translate widget at the top right of this blog). Here is the text of that article, found on page 603 of the September 17, 1936 edition of the journal Light, which you can read here.
"In one of his lectures last year to the L.S.A., the Rev. Cruwys Sharland related how a one-time pupil of his, after suffering for many years from disintegration of the brain, when approaching his death, suddenly recovered complete mental control and gave those present a long circumstantial account of a walking tour he had undertaken when quite a boy, in company with Mr. Sharland, then his tutor. Every detail was correct, every fact rightly placed, as Mr. Sharland himself testified.
Psychica quotes several analogous cases from the German Wahres Leben. A young girl, imbecile for eight years, one morning informed the doctor of the asylum in which she lived that she would die the following night—which she did—and discussed various points with him with full mental awareness. M. Martensen Larsen has recorded the case of an Army doctor confined for homicidal mania, who, just prior to his passing, recovered his sanity and wrote several letters asking the forgiveness of those he had attempted to injure. M. G. W. Surya writes of a friend of his who was summoned to the asylum in which his brother had for years been confined with complete softening of the brain. He found his brother perfectly normal and anxious to make certain suggestions to him. He died the same day, and autopsy revealed that the brain had entirely disintegrated.
How can we account for his complete lucidity before death ?
Similarly, the well-known Berlin anatomist, Benecke, assured his students that Schinkel, the architect, died in possession of all his faculties, in spite of the fact that his cranium was subsequently proved to have been, ' so to speak, empty.' ”
We have here not just one but three different cases in which it is stated that someone with the most severe brain damage seemed to gain or have normal mental function shortly before dying. In two cases it is reported that the person acting normally or with normal cognition just before death had the most extreme disintegration or wasting of the brain, leaving basically no brain left.
At the bottom of page 79 of the book you can read using the link here, we have an account by a person who says this about her grandmother: "An hour before she passed, this old lady suddenly woke up from the stupor that she had been in for six long years." We then hear an account of the grandmother speaking well, and acting as if she saw apparitions of the dead (a common occurrence for the dying, even those without any brain problems).
On page 410 of the book Irreducible Mind we read this:
"Myers (1892b) had referred to the 'sudden revivals of memory or faculty in dying persons' (p.316)...The eminent physician Benjamin Rush...observed that 'most of mad people discover a greater or less degree of reason in the last days or hours of their lives' (p. 257). Similarly, in his classic study of hallucinations, Brierre de Boismont (1859) noted that 'at the approach of death we observed that ... the intellect, which may have been obscured or extinguished during many years, is again restored in all its integrity' (p. 236). Flournoy (1903, p. 48) mentioned that French psychiatrists had recently published cases of mentally ill persons who showed sudden improvements in their condition shortly before death. In more recent years, Osis (1961) reported two cases, 'one of severe schizophrenia and one of senility, [in which] the patients regained normal mentality shortly before death' (p. 24)."
- "7 reported unconscious or confused residents who unexpectedly became lucid enough just before they died to interact with relatives and carers," a phenomena sometimes called "terminal lucidity."
- "6 reported dreams that help to prepare for death, and 2 reported dreams or visions that held significant meaning for the dying to help with unfinished business." The "Dreams" section of the paper on page 200 gives several examples, some involving dreams that seemed to foretell a death.
- "5 reported the dying seeing dead relatives visiting just before death, and 4 reported the dying seeing dead relatives sitting on or near the bed." This is the well-documented phenomenon called deathbed apparitions or deathbed visions, described in my eight posts here.
- "4 reported the synchronistic appearance of birds or animals around or just before the time of death."
- "4 reported a change of room temperature around the time of death," with one saying, "sometimes the room is freezing," and that "at other times it is really, really hot."
- "3 reported synchronistic events at the time of death, such as clocks stopping and bells ringing in rooms of those who had recently died." Read here for examples of the clock stopping at death phenomenon.
Recently there was published the paper "Terminal Lucidity in a Pediatric Oncology Clinic," which reported some similar cases of terminal lucidity. You can read the full paper here. One or more of the authors interviewed the physicians involved in the cases. Before discussing its fascinating account of terminal lucidity in a patient identified as Patient One, I should mention that the term "encephalopathic" typically refers to a severe brain pathology, most often involving a brain infection or a failure of the immune system to protect the brain from infection. In the paper we read this:
"The patient was a three-year-old Hispanic female with prolonged medical treatment history for her diagnosis of hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), a complex and often life-threatening medical condition resulting from an uncontrolled and ineffective immune response, leading to extreme inflammation in many organs/tissues. After over a year of intense treatments, she underwent an umbilical cord blood transplant, which is the only known cure for this condition. Unfortunately, the transplant was rejected, and while attempts were made to find another option for a second transplant, she had a re-emergence of her HLH and was admitted to the hospital for chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Despite some initial improvements, she developed progressive organ damage and deterioration over the next several weeks, prompting transfer to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), with worsening liver and pulmonary failure. She became severely jaundiced and encephalopathic, and was no longer speaking, eating, or responding to parents/providers. The ICU physicians were worried that she was an aspiration risk, prompting intensification of Do Not Resuscitate/Do Not Intubate (DNR/DNI) conversations with her parents. As all the known treatments available were exhausted and her condition worsened, the focus shifted to providing palliative care. Although initially resistant, after nearly two weeks of intense conversations with parents (including family members and a Catholic priest) and further deterioration in their daughter’s condition, a DNI and modified DNR status change was agreed. That evening, the patient awoke and asked for her usual comfort items (i.e., Lion King movie, parents, toys) and food. She showed no indication of mental impairment and regained the ability to sit up in bed and participate in coloring and other simple age-appropriate tasks. She spoke using logical, organized full sentences, and had multiple conversations with her parents that evening, which they and the bedside nurse described as 'like a miracle.' During the conversations with her parents, she reviewed all the important people in her life and prayed for them. She indicated awareness of transitioning to death and reassured loved ones of the need not to be concerned about her. She also seemed to be communicating with people who were not visible to others. After several hours, she asked to 'go to bed' and returned to her comatose state. During the next 24-48 hours, she never awoke again, and she ultimately died peacefully of cardiac arrest in her parents’ arms."
We also read in the new paper of a Patient Three:
"The patient was a 19-month-old boy who underwent a bone marrow transplant at 16 months of age for ill-defined immune deficiency. He was recovering with typical transplant complications until he developed fevers and progressive neurologic symptoms with loss of ability to communicate, loss of motor function, and loss of cognition.... Prior to the lucid event, he was not responding to healthcare providers and was giving parents only minimal response/eye contact. Three days prior to his death, he became much more alert and interactive, in stark contrast to his steady decline of the prior three months, which was preceded by his parents having decided they would not proceed with further life-saving medical interventions (i.e., surgeries, intubation, etc.). He was noted to be able to move, talk, eat, and communicate for 24-48 hours prior to a rapid decline and death. On the night before his death, he communicated with his parents that he 'was ready to go home' and that 'he and parents would be OK' using verbal and sign language. He talked about joining his brother who was a still-birth, and he told his parents he was going to be fine. Subsequently, he returned to severe mental impairment and died within 24 hours."
No such thing as terminal lucidity should occur if your brain was producing your mind. Once a mind-producing brain had deteriorated, such a deterioration would be irreversible. A brain producing a mind would no more suddenly restore itself than a book missing many of its pages would suddenly restore such pages.
Cases such as these are hints that the brain is not the source of the human mind. They are part of a very large body of evidence that minds can operate normally when brains have undergone the most severe damage. Countless other cases are discussed in my posts you can read here and here. Such cases are only some of the innumerable reasons for rejecting the dogma that the brain is the source of the human mind. When studying such cases and reasons (discussed in the most voluminous detail in the posts of this blog), we should remember: nature never told us that brains make minds. It was merely professors who told us that, jumping to conclusions that were never warranted by observations.
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