DEATH. 



791 



DEATH. (Lat. mors; Gr. O^i/aros; Germ. 

 Tod; Fr. mart ; Ital. morte.) This word has 

 acquired a variety of meanings, which it will 

 be proper to enumerate, before explaining 

 the sense to be adopted in the following 

 article. Death sometimes expresses the time 

 when an organic body loses the characters 

 which distinguished it while living ; in which 

 signification it is the opposite, not of life, 

 but of birth, or the period when life began ; 

 this period being dated in the animal either 

 from the time when it left its ovum or its 

 parent, or from the very moment of con- 

 ception ; and in the vegetable, either from 

 its emergence above the earth, or from the 

 first impulse of germination. In another 

 acceptation, Death is that altered condition 

 of an organic body in which it is no longer 

 the subject of certain processes which con- 

 stituted its life. Thirdly, it may signify that 

 series of changes which immediately precede 

 the cessation of life ; in this meaning, death 

 is the act or process of dying. Lastly, in the 

 human subject, the word is employed to express 

 the separation of the soul from the body. It 

 will be our object not so much to follow out 

 these several significations, which would lead 

 into a very wide if not a vague discussion, as 

 to consider the precise nature of that condition 

 of the animal body to which the term Death 

 in its physiological import is applicable, and 

 to enquire by what signs that state may be 

 known to be either impending, or actually 

 present. 



Death in its most restricted sense may be 

 defined to be that condition which imme- 

 diately succeeds the abolition of all those ac- 

 tions or properties which distinguish living 

 from brute matter, a condition not merely 

 negative but privative. But death is likewise 

 applied to certain states of the organic system 

 in the higher animals, in which the abolition 

 of the functions is not universal. In the 

 former sense, an animal is not dead until 

 every vital action throughout the tissues has 

 been extinguished ; while in the latter, dis- 

 solution is considered to have taken place 

 when the circulation and respiration have 

 ceased, because the cessation of the others 

 almost uniformly follows. We have here 

 then an obvious distinction of Death into two 

 kinds, which will be found to correspond 

 with a very natural division of the vital actions 

 into two classes; 1, those which transpire 

 between the particles of which living bodies 

 are composed (nutrition and contraction) ; and 

 2, those which occur between certain collec- 

 tions of organic particles, called organs, and 

 by virtue of which these organs constitute a 

 whole system (respiration, circulation, inner- 

 vation, &c.) The extinction of the former of 

 these classes of functions we shall venture to 

 designate Molecular Death ; of the latter, 

 Systemic Death.* 



* We should have been glad to have avoided a 

 word so incorrectly formed as systemic, but its use 

 ha fbeen sanctioned by too many and too great au- 

 thorities for us to venture upon the substitution of 



The following truths respecting the mutual 

 influence of these two kinds of death will be 

 illustrated in the course of the present article : 

 1st, That molecular does not necessarily in- 

 volve systemic death, unless the former is 

 universal. 2dly, That when partial, as in 

 mortification, the tendency of molecular to in- 

 duce systemic death depends on the import- 

 ance of the part to the whole. 3dly, That 

 molecular death in one part can only induce 

 the same change in another part, by means of 

 its interference with one of the systemic func- 

 tions. 4thly, That systemic death must neces- 

 sarily be followed sooner or later by molecular 

 death, but that, 5thly, The reality of systemic 

 death can only be proved with certainty by 

 the occurrences pertaining to molecular death. 



MOLECULAR DEATH. 



Molecular life is constituted by two func- 

 tions, Nutrition and Contraction, for which 

 certain conditions are requisite. The former 

 demands a mechanism or tissue of pores or in- 

 finitely minute tubes, the ingress and egress 

 of fluid, and a certain quality of this fluid; 

 the latter, a fibrous arrangement of particles, 

 in most animals and in all a peculiar property 

 called irritability or contractility. The viola- 

 tions of these conditions are necessarily fol- 

 lowed by molecular death. We shall consider 

 them in detail. 



Destruction of the tissues. It is all but a 

 truism to assert that the function of a tissue 

 must cease when its mechanism is broken up, 

 though mere integrity of the mechanism is 

 insufficient to maintain the function. The 

 changes which ensue are as follows. The sub- 

 stance is no longer capable of receiving and 

 transmitting fluid in the same manner as for- 

 merly ; the fluid which it contained is either 

 confused with the disorganized solid particles, or 

 is altogether eliminated ; the fibres are unfitted 

 for contraction ; and the nervous filaments are 

 paralysed. In this condition the part has ob- 

 viously no kind of connection with the rest of 

 the system, by the exchange either of fluid, or 

 of nervous influence ; it is dead both abso- 

 lutely and relatively. If the other organs sur- 

 vive its death, certain processes commence in 

 its immediate vicinity, by means of which a 

 mechanical as well as a vital separation is 

 effected ; while the mortified part, as it is 

 technically called, is abandoned to the play of 

 various chemical affinities among its particles, 

 and between these and surrounding agents. 

 According as these changes are less or more ad- 

 vanced, there is gangrene or sphacelus. It 

 may happen however that the other parts of 

 the frame may lose their vitality soon after the 

 local injury ; but their dissolution will depend 

 upon the violation of other conditions than 

 that which we are at present discussing. 

 Thus the part disorganized may be essential 



a newly-created one. The writer is indebted to his 

 friend Dr. Prichard for the suggestion of somatic, 

 which is at once correct, and sufficiently characte- 

 ristic, but he has not had the courage to introduce 

 it into the text, though supported by an authority 

 no less eminent in philology than in general sci- 

 ence. 



