Death rattle

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A death rattle is a gurgling or rattle-like noise produced by the accumulation of excessive respiratory secretions in the throat.

Those who are dying may lose their ability to swallow, resulting in such an accumulation.

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.

Literary use

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

"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"

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