Scientists differ somewhat on this subject, but the weight of authority favors the view that hair/ including the beard, ceases to grow at death. Some of the Spaniards under Hernando Cortez in Mexico found a teocalli in which was a row of Spaniards sacrificed by the Aztecs. “Their hair and beards/’ wrote Bernard Diaz del Castillo, a ‘chronicler of the expedition, “were much longer than when they were alive and I should never have believed it had I not seen it.” In. 1862 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, English painter and poet, was so stricken by grief that he buried some manuscripts of his unpublished poems in the coffin with his wife. When some years later the grave was opened to recover the manuscripts, the coffin, it is said, was found to be entirely filled, with his wife’s hair, “which had grown after death.” Apparent growth of the hair and beard after death is explained by the shrinkage of the soft tissue around each individual hair, which is the natural result of the evaporation of the liquids of t”he muscles. For this reason undertakers sometimes have to shave a corpse again several days after death so it will be clean-shaven at the funeral. When a person dies all the tissues of the body do not die instantly. Some parts of the body may continue to live an hour or more after the heart stops. Those authorities who believe there are authentic cases of the hair actually growing after death admit that such cases are very rare and that the growth could continue for only a short time. No credence is given by scientists to the many popular reports that a complete beard or suit of hair sometimes grows on a corpse. The lengthening of the hairs, as well as the finger and toe nails, observed on a corpse are due merely to the contraction of the skin toward the roots and not to a “vital process” after the death of the individual.
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