A death rattle is a gurgling or rattle-like noise produced by the accumulation of excessive respiratory secretions in the throat. Look up Throat in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Those who are dying may lose their ability to swallow, resulting in such an accumulation. This page deals with the cessation of life. ... Swallowing, known scientifically as deglutition, is the reflex in the human body that makes something pass from the mouth, to the pharynx, into the esophagus, with the shutting of the epiglottis. ...

While it is medically established that the death rattle is a strong indication that someone is near death, it can also be produced by other problems that cause interference with the swallowing reflex, for instance, brain injuries.

It is sometimes misinterpreted as the sound of the person choking to death. Choking is the obstruction of the flow of air into a persons lungs by a foreign object, commonly food. ...

In terminal care, drugs such as hyoscine hydrobromide or atropine may be used to reduce secretions and minimise this effect. Atropine is a tropane alkaloid extracted from the deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) and other plants of the family Solanaceae. ...

Religious Beliefs: In Islam it is a common belief which is mentioned in its teachings that God will accept someone’s repentance until the sounding of their death rattle.

Literary use

Widespread understanding of the significance of the death rattle has led to its common use in literature.

In common palance we call it a "death rattle." It is one of those terms that through use has passed into the realm of fantasy so that many no longer believe it is an actual biological phenomenon. In fact, it is. Forensics experts tell us that the death rattle is the result of involuntary spasms in the vocal box brought on by the increased acidity in the blood following death. The noise itself is alternately described as a loud bark or whooping rasp emitted by a victim sometime after death.

— Steve Martini, The Judge, page 362

"If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business."

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Presently his fingers began to pick busily at the coverlet, and by that sign I knew that his end was at hand. With the first suggestion of the death rattle in his throat he started up slightly, and seemed to listen; then he said:

"A bugle?...It is the king! The drawbridge, there! Man the battlements!—turn out the—"

He was getting up his last "effect"; but he never finished it.

— Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

"Next morning, around six o'clock, the servant entered the room with a candle. He found his master lying on the floor, the pistol beside him, and blood everywhere. He called, he touched him; no answer came, only a rattling in the throat."

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

"Life, like a child, laughs, shaking its rattle of death as it runs."

— Rabindranath Tagore

Steve Martini writer of legal novels, know for THE JUDGE and UNDUE INFLUENCE. Born in San Francisco, raised in Bay Area and Southern California. ... Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862; born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, and philosopher who is most well-known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),[1] better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American humorist, satirist, writer, and lecturer. ... A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. ... Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. ... The Sorrows of Young Werther (German, Die Leiden des jungen Werther, originally published as Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) is a loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774. ... Rabindranath Tagore ( ; Bangla: ; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941), also known by the sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali poet, Brahmo Samaj (syncretic Hindu monotheist) philosopher, visual artist, playwright, composer, and novelist whose works reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ...

Uses In Popular Culture

• Sir Anthony Hopkins, in his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter, makes a slurping rattling noise after his famous fava beans and chianti speech; this has been referred to as a Death Rattle despite the fact that it is distinctly different from the generally accepted usage (it is done intentionally and doesn't signify approaching death or a physical disorder).^[1]

• Death Rattle is also a song by metal band Pantera off of their Reinventing the Steel album.

• In the The Grudge trilogy of films, the cursed Kayako Saeki makes death rattle-like sounds while she haunts her victims.

• In Red vs Blue, the machinima series by Rooster Teeth Productions, the death rattle is almost always used whenever a character dies, and is performed in a very distinctive way. Since all the characters are portrayed by video game avatars, and are only capable of limited types of movements and almost no visual expressions, the death rattle is needed to indicate that a character has actually died and isn't simply lying down or unconscious.

• In the online game Urban Dead, Death Rattle is a skill which may be purchased by zombie players, and allows the zombie limited speech with others possessing the skill.

A separate article is about composer Antony Hopkins. ... Dr. Hannibal Lecter is a fictional character appearing in four novels by author Thomas Harris and their film adaptations. ... Binomial name Vicia faba L. Vicia faba, the broad bean, fava bean, faba bean, horse bean, field bean or tic bean is a species of bean (Fabaceae) native to north Africa and southwest Asia, and extensively cultivated elsewhere. ... Chianti is Italys most famous red wine. ... Pantera was an American heavy metal band from Arlington, Texas, that formed in 1981. ... Reinventing the Steel is Panteras last Heavy metal music album, said to be performed in a new personal way. ... The Grudge Trilogy is the American movie trilogy from Sony Pictures which is based on the Japanese Ju-on: The Grudge series created by Takashi Shimizu. ... Kayako Saeki, as depicted by Takako Fuji. ... Red vs Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, sometimes abbreviated as RvB, is a comic science fiction video series created by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed via the Internet and DVD. The series chronicles the story of two opposing teams of soldiers fighting a civil war in the middle of a... Rooster Teeth Productions is an award-winning production group from Buda, Texas that specializes in the creation of machinima, or films created using real-time, interactive engines from computer and video games. ... Urban Dead is an HTML/text-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game created by Kevan Davis. ... A participant in a Zombie Walk event in Calgary This article is about the undead. ...

External links

• Medical College of Wisconsin End of Life Resource Centre - Death Rattle
• GP Notebook (UK) - Death Rattle
• East Tennessee State University - pulmonary breath sounds page with a death rattle sound clip

The Death Rattle is also mentioned in J.K.Rowling's Harry Potter series, as one of the sounds produced by the Dementors.