Normal clinical thermometers in American hospitals in 1980 typically measured down to 88 or 90 degrees Fahrenheit — a temperature so far below normal human body temperature (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) that it represents profound hypothermia, well beyond anything normally survivable.

Jean Hilliard’s temperature was below that.

The thermometer gave no reading because her temperature was below the range the thermometer was designed to measure.

She appeared, in every observable way, to be dead.

Dr.

Sather later described his thinking at this moment with the phrase that would come to define the medical principle at the center of this case: he had heard the principle that “no one is dead until they are warm and dead,” and he chose to act on it.

There was another reason to act: the faint whimper.