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Medical Death - bodily collapse and brain death

Understanding the cell is essential to modern medicine and continued medical progress. But the cell has only recently been a major part of medical knowledge, being first considered scientifically with the publication of Theodor Schwann's book: Microscopical Researches into the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Animals and Plants, in 1839; a high point in the history of recorded medicine. This recorded history began with the Ancient Egyptian cult of the dead, which contributed the most to early medicine; embalmers from as early as the 3rd millennium BCE needed to understand human anatomy so as to work with preservatives for organs and whole bodies. In those days, and for many centuries after, bodily collapse was how humans defined death. That the whole body no longer moved or supported itself was enough for medical practitioners to declare death, even though the patient might have been revivable and even though the majority of bodily cells still lived (a fact people were ignorant of prior to the more thorough understanding of cell-science that began in the 19th century). Due to our modern understanding of the body, brain death is now the criterion used to define death. This is because the cellular structure of the body can be maintained through life support and patients revived after laying dead, in the old sense, for hours in the operating room while vital organs are replaced or healed.

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