1. Rabow, Michael W. and Robert V. Brody, “Care at the End of Life,” in L.M. Tierney, Jr., S.J. Mcphee, and M. A. Papadakis, Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment, (37
th ed., Stamford, CT: Appleton and Lange, 1998) Chapter 5, pp. 107–111.
2. Sevensky, Robert L., “Religion and Illness: An Outline of Their Relationship,” Southern Medical Journal,74, 6, p. 749.
3. Wilhelm Engel, ed. Die Würzburger Bischofschronik des Grafen Wilhelm Werner von Zimmern und die Würzburger Geschichstsschreibung des I6.Jahrhunderts. Veröffentlichungen der Gesellschaft für fränkische Geschichte, 1. Reihe: Fränkische Chroniken, Bd. 2. Würzburg: Kommissionsverlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1952, p. 129. I am grateful to my colleague Thomas Brady for this reference.
4. There are two excellent dissertations and a contemporary collection of documents which deal with this, the first serious medical confrontation with death as a diagnostic and analytic category: Patak, Martin. Die Angst vor dem Scheintod in der 2. Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts. (Zurich, Juris-Verlag, 1967.) in the series Züricher medizingeschichtliche Abhandlungen. Neue Reihe; Nr. 44; Stoessel, Ingrid, Scheintod und Todesangst: Äusserungsformen der Angst in ihren geschichtlichen Wandlungen (17.-20. Jahrhundert),(Köln: Forschungsstelle des Instituts für Geschichte der Medizin der Universität zu Köln, 1983; and Hufeland, Christoph Wilhelm, Der Scheintod, oder, Sammlung der wichtigen Thatsachen und Bemerkungen daruber, in alphabetischer Ordnung (1808) herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Gerhard Kopf. (Bern, New York: P. Lang, 1986) Hufeland was a great friend of Goethe, Schiller, and Herder during his Weimar years, 1783–93, and later became professor of medicine in Berlin. He was at the forefront of the battle to bring Jenner and smallpox vaccination to the German states.
5. Kevorkian, Jack, Medical Research and the Death Penalty; a Dialogue. (1st ed., New York, Vintage Press, 1960). For a nineteenth century example, see Taylor, Alfred Swaine, The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence (3’d ed, Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea, 1883) “Asphyxia,” and especially chapter 55, “hanging”, pp. 33–59.