JR 137
Grandmaster
My thoughts exactly. Way back when, they didn’t know what we know today. They didn’t have imaging and diagnostic equipment. Someone fought, got hit, walked away, and died a day or even a few months later. The one who didn’t die could claim it was a delayed death touch, and there was no proof it wasn’t. Some people claiming it may have been charlatans, but I’m sure others believed they did use the death touch.Theres even a possible relation. You damaged an internal organ, you domt know that happened, they dont know that happened, doctors dont know it happened. Out of nowhere (seemingly) they die overnight, you dont understand internal injuries and assume you disrupted his ki. At the beginning it may have been simple ignorance, not a con.
Working in sports medicine, I’ve seen several athletes get hit with what would’ve been a delayed death touch way back when. I’ve seen a few ruptured spleens. Only one of them believed me when I told them I suspected a ruptured spleen. One guy argued with me and said I was an idiot because his shoulder hurt, not his abdomen (Kehr’s Sign). I put him in an ambulance with a coach, and when I got to the hospital after the game, they were prepping him to remove his spleen. An ancient Chinese fighter would’ve went home, went to sleep and not woken up. Delayed death touch. I’m sure it still happens.
I had a football player who took a very hard helmet to helmet hit. My boss at the time and I checked him for a concussion. He had no objective signs of one, and he said he didn’t have any subjective signs (headache, nausea, etc.).* He walked away and we noticed he was dragging his foot a little bit. I went with him in the ambulance. He had a subdural hematoma (bleeding in the brain). Had we not made the decision to get him looked at, he would’ve most likely went to sleep on the bus ride home and died in his sleep. Delayed death touch.
*We asked him if he lied to us about not having a headache several times after everything was said and done. He’s always said he didn’t have a headache nor anything else. The only symptoms he had were the dropped foot and some numbness on the back of his thigh. He had no reason to lie after it was over - he spent about a month in the hospital, and his career was over. One of the truly most bizarre head injuries I’ve ever seen.
Stuff like this happens. We can figure out the cause of death now, and we can prevent a lot of it. During the old days when they had no scientific explanations nor any way of coming up with the actual explanation, Dim Mak would seem pretty logical. No different than thinking the Earth was flat, the Earth was the center of the universe, etc. Those things seem pretty logical until someone proves them wrong scientifically.