272 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



rences in death from old age, in that occasioned by disease, and in 

 sudden death. 



The man who expires at the close of a long decline in years, dies 

 in detail. All his senses in succession are sealed. Sight becomes dim 

 and unsteady, and at last loses the picture of objects. Hearing grows 

 gradually insensible to sounds. Touch is blunted into dulness, odors 

 produce but a weak impression, only taste lingers a little. At the 

 same time that the organs of sensation waste and lose their excitabil- 

 ity, the functions of the brain fade out little by little. Imagination 

 becomes unfixed, memory nearly fails, judgment wavers. Further, 

 motions are slow and difficult on account of stiffness in the muscles; 

 the voice breaks ; in short, all the functions of outward life lose their 

 spring. Each of the bonds attaching the old man to existence parts 

 by slow degrees. Yet the internal life persists. Nutrition still takes 

 place, but very soon the forces desert the most essential organs. 

 Digestion languishes, the secretions dry up, capillary circulation is 

 clogged : that of the large vessels in their turn is checked, and, at 

 last, the heart's contractions cease. This is the instant of death. The 

 heart is the last thing to die. Such is the series of slow and partial 

 deaths which, with the old man spared by disease, result in the last 

 end of all. The individual who falls into the sleep of eternity in these 

 conditions, dies like the vegetable which, having no consciousness of 

 life, can have no consciousness of death. He passes insensibly from 

 one to the other, and to die thus is to know no pain. The thought of 

 the last hour alarms us only because it puts a sudden end to our rela- 

 tions with all our surroundings ; but, if the feeling of these relations 

 has long ago faded away, there can be no place for fear at the brink 

 of the grave. The animal does not tremble in the instant before it 

 ceases to be. 



Unfortunately, death of this kind is very rare for humanity. Death 

 from old age has become an extraordinary phenomenon. Most com- 

 monly we succumb to a disturbance in the functions of our vital sys- 

 tem, which is sometimes sudden, sometimes gradual. In this case, as 

 in the former one, we observe animal life disappearing first, but the 

 modes of its conclusion are infinitely varied. One of the most usual 

 is death through the lungs ; as a restilt of pneumonia and different 

 forms of phthisis, the oxidation of the blood becoming impossible 

 on account of the disorganization of the pulmonary globules, venous 

 blood goes back to the heart without gaining revivification. In the 

 case of serious and prolonged fevers, and of infectious diseases, whether 

 epidemic or otherwise, which are, characteristically, blood-poisonings, 

 death occurs through a general change in nutrition. This is still more 

 the fact as to death consequent upon certain chronic disorders of the 

 digestive organs. When these are affected, the secretion of those 

 juices fitted to dissolve food dries up, and these fluids go through the 

 intestinal canal unemployed. In this case the invalid dies of real 



