General Principles of Physiologi/. 1 ] 1 



" As the coagulation of the blood appears to be that process 

 which may be compared with the action of life in the solids, 

 we shall examine this property a little farther, and see if this 

 power of coagulation can be destroyed. If it can, we shall next 

 inquire if by the same means life is destroyed in the solids, and 

 if the phenomena are nearly the same in both. The prevention 

 of coagulation may be effected by electricity, and often is by 

 lightning. It takes place in some deaths, and is produced in 

 some of the natural operations of the body, all of which I shall 

 now consider. 



" Animals, killed by lightning, and also by electricity, have 

 not their muscles contracted. This arises from death being 

 instantaneously produced in the muscles, which therefore can- 

 not be affected by any stimulus, nor consequently by the sti- 

 mulus of death. In such cases the blood does not coagulate ; 

 animals who are run very hard, and killed in such a state, or, 

 what produces still a greater effect, are run to death, have neither 

 their muscles contracted, nor their blood coagulated; and in 

 both respects the effect is in proportion to the cause *. 



" I had two deer run till they dropped down and died ; in 

 neither did I find the muscles contracted, nor the blood coagulated. 



" In many kinds of death we find that the muscles neither 

 contract, nor the blood coagulates. In some cases the muscles 

 will contract, while the blood continues fluid ; in some the 

 contrary happens, and in others the blood will only coagulate 

 to the consistence of cream. 



" Blows on the stomach kill immediately, and the muscles 

 do not contract, nor does the blood coagulate. Such deaths 

 as prevent the contraction of the muscles, or the coagulation of 

 the blood, are, I believe, always sudden. Death from sudden 

 gusts of passion is of this kind, and in all these cases the body 

 soon putrefies after death. In many diseases, if accurately 

 attended to, we find this correspondence between muscles and 

 blood *." 



* Mr. Hunter's Treatise on Inflammation cmd Gun-shot Wou7uls,\iA. I. 



