IN 1907, physician Duncan MacDougall . He placed dying people on scales and weighed them as they passed away. The people supposedly lost an average of 21 grams, which MacDougall – glossing over the uncertainties in his measurements – took to be the soul leaving the body.
Even today people still seek transcendental truths in the scientific study of death. When researchers detected a wave of electrical activity in patients’ brains after their hearts had stopped, the spiritualist Deepak Chopra , arguing that they were evidence that consciousness can endure without…
