ABSTRACT
The question in the medical profession over the definition of biological death, Robert Glaser suggests, appears to have been resolved, practically speaking, in favor of the brain, rather than the heart or lungs, as the place where human life makes its last stand. Social death begins when the institution, accepting impending death, loses its interest or concern for the dying individual as a human being and treats him as a body—that is, as if he were already dead. A human institution, or social organization, acquires an integrity of its own, of course. Hospital deaths are commonly preceded by a period of what is generally regarded as a coma. Physicians in the private hospital were especially sensitive to the interpretation that might be made should they characterize the patient’s condition as “terminal.” The discovery of death—always an event of some social consequence—typically occurred in the course of ongoing ward activity of all kinds.
