1032 OF DEATH. 



cline and death of its component tissues ; and this the more rapidly in pro- 

 portion to the activity of the changes which are effected by their instru- 

 mentality. But if the regenerative processes be also performed with due 

 vigor, no deterioration of the organ is manifested, since every loss of sub- 

 stance is compensated by the production of an equivalent amount of new and 

 similar tissue. This regenerative power, however, gradually diminishes 

 with the advance of years; and thus it happens that the entire organism pro- 

 gressively deteriorates ( 877), and that Death at last supervenes from a 

 general failure of the vital powers, rather than from the perversion or cessa- 

 tion of any one class of actions in particular. 



880. But Death may occur at any period of Life, from some local inter- 

 ruption produced by disease or injury in the regular sequence of vital 

 actions; such interruption extending itself from the part in which it com- 

 mences to the organism in general, in virtue of that intimate mutual de- 

 pendence of one function upon another, which is characteristic of all the 

 higher orders of living beings. The death of the body as a whole, which 

 may be appropriately designated Somatic 1 death, becomes a necessary conse- 

 quence of the death of a certain part of it, or Molecular death, only when 

 the cessation of activity in the latter interferes with the elaboration, the 

 circulation, or the depuration of the Blood, which supplies not merely the 

 nutritive pabulum to every part of the organism, but also the oxygen which 

 is essential to the activity of the Nervo-muscular apparatus. Thus, even in 

 the higher animals, the death or removal of the limbs, although they may 

 constitute (as in Man) a large proportion of the fabric, is not necessarily 

 fatal ; because it involves no interruption, either in the nutritive operations 

 of the viscera, or in the sensorial functions of the brain. 2 On the other hand, 

 the destruction of a certain minute portion of the Nervous centres, or such 

 a lesion of the Heart's structure as would be trivial in almost any other organ, 

 may be the occasion of immediate death ; because these changes arrest the Res- 

 piratory movements, or interfere directly with the action of the Heart so as 

 to bring the flow of blood to a stand. It sometimes happens, however, that 

 life may be prolonged after the death or removal of some important organ, 

 in consequence of the power which some other possesses of discharging its 

 functions; thus we find that in Man the kidneys seem occasionally to take 

 upon themselves the elimination of the constituents of bile from the blood 

 ( 385) ; and in the Frog the skin can perform part of the office of the lungs, 

 so as to effect the aeration of the blood in a sufficient degree to prolong life 

 for some time, unless the temperature be elevated. 3 



881. But although the vital activity of every part of the body is depen- 

 dent upon a due supply of circulating fluid, yet this dependence is usually 

 not so close as to involve the immediate suspension of vital activity, or 

 Molecular Death, in every part, whenever the general Circulation shall have 

 been brought to a stand. For we have distinct evidence of the persistence 



1 This term was first suggested by Dr. Prichard, in place of the less accurate term 

 "systemic" which was previously in use. (See Cyclop, of Anat. and Physiol., vol. i, 

 p. 701.) 



1 The Author has been informed by Dr. Dnnicll that it is not at all uncommon in 

 Negroes who are in the last stage of the adynamic fevers of the African coast, for 

 death and decomposition to extend gradually upwards from the extremities to the 

 trunk ; so that the former may be in a state of absolute putrescence, before the respi- 

 ration and circulation have been brought to a stand, and he learns from Prof. Jack- 

 son, of Philadelphia, that he has more than once witnessed the same occurrence. 



3 That such cannot take place in Man, is due not merely to the far less complete 

 adaptation of his skin for the aeration of the blood, but also to the difference in the 

 type ol his circulation, which causes the arrest of blood in the pulmonary vessels to 

 produce a stagnation of the entire current. 



