Found in this work are the causes and phenomena associated with death, with special reference to immortality. Death is generally looked upon as something to be tabooed by polite society, something unpleasant, which may someday come upon us, but which we desire to think about as little as possible in the interval. The authors believe that death assumes the appearance of a most interesting scientific problem, both from its physiological and its psychological sides, once superstition is removed. They refer to the possibility of postponing death, on one hand, and of rendering it more painless, on the other.