Death is inevitable, but dying well is not. Despite the role of medical professionals as overseers of dying in contemporary society, there is comparatively little discourse among doctors about the constituents of a good death. In the 15th century, by contrast, the Ars moriendi portrayed normative medieval ideas about good and bad deaths. At a time when dying could be viewed as a performed battl...

Non-verbal signals are very subtle: they are socially learnt and can be as confusing to a foreigner as an unknown language. We watch a person's face and observe slight changes of expression in the eyes or mouth. We note the making or evasion of eye contact and whether the movement is natural or forced. We unconsciously see the embarrassed wave of a hand and hear a change in the timbre of the vo...