Dr. Wilson Philip on Death. 361 



serial, the nervous and the muscular, which have no direct depend- 

 ence on each other, although they are linked together by the con- 

 nexions of the organs in which they reside ; the consequence of which 

 is, that the cessation of any one class of functions is more or less im- 

 mediately followed by the destruction of the rest. What is commonly 

 called death consists in the extinction of the sensorial functions only ; 

 for the nervous and muscular functions may still, for a time, survive ; 

 although, in consequence of the failure of respiration, which in the 

 more perfect animals the author considers as, in the strictest sense, 

 a function of volition, they also speedily terminate. Thus he distin- 

 guishes this sensorial death from what constitutes actual death, that 

 is, the cessation of all the functions, and which occurs at a later pe- 

 riod. As far as the sensorial powers are concerned, their decline and 

 cessation are exceedingly analogous to the approach and occurrence 

 of sleep ; the only difference being that the former is an irrevocable 

 failure of those powers, while the latter admits of their being resumed 

 with renovated vigour by the continued action of the vital powers. 



The modes in which the sensitive functions are extinguished, or in 

 other words the forms of death, are referred by the author to five dif- 

 ferent heads : the first and only natural mode is that from the simple 

 effect of old age, when all the powers of life are completely exhausted 

 by the continued operation of the agents which had excited them ; and 

 death is, in that case, only the last sleep. The vital functions are 

 here impaired, chiefly from the diminished frequency of respiration, 

 which is itself a consequence of the impaired sensibility ; so that there 

 is a diminution of the action, but not of the powers, of the vital or- 

 gans. If the decay of the vital powers be gradual, and nothing occurs 

 suddenly to accelerate it, they will necessarily cease at the time when 

 their excitement is the smallest, that is, during the state of sleep. 



In all other cases, death arises from causes which must be regarded 

 as adventitious, and consequently as inducing a more or less violent 

 death. The first class of these causes comprises those arising from 

 the continued action of stimulants, more powerful than the ordinary 

 stimulants to which the system is subjected, and. making their imme- 

 diate impression on the organs of the sensitive system. These may- 

 be considered as producing a diseased condition of the sensorium, 

 which, by sympathy, communicates its influence to the vital organs. 

 The next form of death is that which is induced by such causes as 

 are applied, in a sufficient degree, to act as direct sedatives to the or-' 

 gans of the sensitive system, that is, to impair their excitability with- 

 out previous excitement. The third set of causes of death compre- 

 hends those which operate by depriving some of the vital organs of 

 those stimulants on which their functions depend ; and the last con- 

 sists of such as directly debilitate those organs themselves. Thus, 

 according to the author, these adventitious causes act either directly 

 by destroying the power of the brain and spinal cord, or by affecting 

 the vital parts of those organs, so as, through them, to destroy the 

 circulation or the assimilatory functions. The destruction of the cir- 

 culation appears, in all cases, to be the cause of instantaneous death, 

 and alwavs to be effected through impressions made on the vital parts 



Thud', Series. Vol. 4. No. 23. May 1 834. 3 A 



