THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 2 jg 



Denmark speaks to Horatio, mark the extreme limits of the transforma- 

 tion of matter. In any case the beings of lowest order that toil and 

 engender in the bosom of putrefaction are really absorbing and storing 

 away life, since without their aid the corpse could not serve as nutri- 

 ment to plants, which in their turn are the necessary reservoir whence 

 animality draws its sap and strength. It is in this sense that BufFon's 

 doctrine of organic molecules is a true one. 



Death is the necessary end of all organic existence. We may hope 

 more or less to set at a distance its inevitable hour, but it would be 

 madness to dream of its indefinite postponement in any species what- 

 soever. No doubt there is no contradiction in conceiving of a perfect 

 equilibrium between assimilation and disassimilation, such that the 

 system would be maintained in immortal health. In any case, no one 

 has yet even gained a glimpse of the modes of realizing such an equi- 

 librium, and death continues, till further orders, a fixed law of Fate. 

 Still, though immortality for a complete organism seems chimerical, 

 perhaps it is not the same with the immortality of a separate organ in 

 the sense we now explain. We have already alluded to the experi- 

 ments of M. Paul Bert on animal-grafting. He has proved that, on 

 the head of a rat, certain organs of the same animal as the tail, for 

 instance may be grafted. And this physiologist asks himself the 

 question, whether it would not be possible, when a rat provided with 

 such an appendage draws near the close of his existence, to remove the 

 appendage from him, and transplant it to a young animal, which in his 

 turn would be deprived of the ornament in the same way in his old 

 age in favor of some specimen of a new generation, and so on in suc- 

 cession. This tail, transplanted in regular course to young animals, 

 and imbibing at each transference blood full of vitality, perpetually 

 renewed, yet ever remaining the same, would thus escape death. The 

 experiment, delicate and difficult, as we well see, was yet undertaken 

 by M. Bert, but circumstances did not allow it to be prolonged for any 

 considerable time, and the fact of the perpetuity of an organ, periodi- 

 cally rejuvenated, remains to be demonstrated. 



III. 



Real death, then, is characterized by the positive ceasing of vital 

 properties and functions both in the organic or vegetative life, and in 

 the animal life, properly so termed. When animal life disappears with- 

 out any interruption occurring in organic life, the system is in a state 

 of seeming death. In this state the body is possessed by profound 

 sleep quite similar to that of hibernating animals ; all the usual ex- 

 pressions and all signs of internal activity have disappeared, and give 

 place to invincible torpor. The most powerful chemical stimulants 

 exert no control over the organs, the walls of the chest are motionless ; 

 in short, seeing the body presenting this appearance, it is impossible 

 not to think of it as dead. There are quite numerous states of the or- 



