What attends the final act?

The dying suffer no pain. The rule is that unconsciousness, not pain, attends the final act. Death is no more painful than birth. Painlessly you come, painlessly you go.

Nature kindly provides an anaesthetic for the body when the spirit leaves it. Previous to that moment and in preparation for it, respiration becomes feeble, generally slow and short, often accompanied by long inspiration and short, sudden expirations, so that the blood is steadily less and less oxygenated. At the same time, the heart acts with corresponding debility, producing a slow, feeble, and often irregular pulse.

As this progress goes on, the blood is not only driven to the head with diminished force and in less quantity, but what flows there is loaded more and more with carbonic acid gas―a powerful anaesthetic―the same as that derived from charcoal.

Subject to its influence, the nerve centres lose consciousness and sensibility, apparent sleep creeps over the system, then stupor, and then the end.