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to spread, as if the principle of life in this seat spontaneously be- 

 came extinct, and as if the structure of the part suffered no 

 change save that which might be imputed to the extinction of the 

 living principle. This is the only case which occurs to me, 

 arising out of our experience, in which death may be attributed to 

 exclusive change in the life of a seat, terminating in the cessation 

 of this principle; and even this case is not unexceptionable. If 

 may be argued against, by observing that latent preparatory 

 changes might have been going on in the structure of the blood- 

 vessels of the part. It will be observed, that their phenomena are 

 not those of a mere extinction of life, with preservation of a healthy 

 state of the organization : life, it will be urged, becomes univer- 

 sally extinct in every instance of death, yet we do not find that 

 the whole body immediately assumes the appearance presented by 

 a gangrenous state of the structures. The mortification also, it will 

 be observed, is a sloughing process; no such process supervenes 

 to death in other instances : half the integument of a foot may 

 slough away in three or four days, while the integrity of the same 

 textures may be preserved, in ordinary death, perhaps for weeks. 

 Hence it would appear, that if a long series of preparatory pro- 

 cesses did not take place in the structures of the blood-vessels 

 previous to death, these structures were peculiarly influenced 

 by the agency of life, previous to its extinction. It would remain 

 to discriminate whether such changes of the textures were merely 

 the effects of a tendency of the principle, which run its course of 

 disease, independently, to its final extinction; or whether its ten- 

 dency to extinction was affected, or in part produced, by the 

 re-agency of the condition of the structures: under these doubts, 

 we must say that we have no unequivocal example of death by 

 exclusive changes among the properties of life; that such a mode 

 of death is indicated by some of the phenomena of mortification : 

 at the same time, that the possibility of such a mode of death is 

 conformable with general principles. 



13. Thus much may be said modestly, and with strict respect 

 to the evidence. But, it must be remarked also, in favour of this 

 mode of death (by exclusive spiritual causation), that although, in 

 the instances in which it might be supposed, it is not impossible 

 but the event may be assisted by the re-agency of a preternatural 

 condition of the fluid or structural alliances; yet, on the other hand, 

 it can rarely be proved, where these secondary states of the 

 materials are the most obvious, that they help in any degree the 

 extinction of the spirit; or that this latter does not run its own 

 course of change, independently of such supposed re-agents. 

 Thus, for example, suppose death to happen by phrenitis: the 

 secondary material effects of the primary conditions of the spirit 

 are turgescence of the blood-vessels, the effusion of patches of 

 lymph, perhaps rather more serum in the ventricles than ought to 

 be found in them, &c. I would ask what is the proof that these 

 secondary diseases, these material changes, contributed to the 



