381 



19. I have applied the term " death," in these cases, in com- 

 pliance with common language. When the heart ceases to act, this 

 has been called the death of the heart ; the same of the brain, when 

 the phenomena of life and health, which are imputed to it, no longer 

 occur; and the same of the lungs, when respiration ceases. I would 

 be understood (for it is a point of doctrine of importance) that these 

 are not instances of the causation of death of the organic life, but 

 of suspension, or extinction of function; producing consecutively, 

 by a relation common to all parts, the death of the organic life. 

 Death, or extinction of the organic assimilating life, in one seat, can 

 never produce directly death of the organic life in another; for the 

 organic life, as has been satisfactorily proved, is every where depen- 

 dent only upon its own existence, and upon the supply of blood. 

 Hence, if one leg were to die, the organic life on one side the line 

 of mortification would not be at all affected by the death of the leg, 

 provided it were itself a correct assimilating principle, and was sup- 

 plied with arterial blood. The sympathies of disease in the organic 

 life may lead to processes of causation in related seats, which may 

 terminate in death, in such secondary seats: but this would happen 

 from communication of the same properties, whether life were 

 afterwards preserved or extinct, in the primary seat; for relations of 

 life cease, when the change of life into death has happened; and as 

 no phenomena can then be produced by relation of the primary with 

 a secondary seat, except loss of function in the cases of that which 

 has been called regular dependent life, so it follows that the organic 

 life of one seat cannot suffer by the death of the organic life of 

 another, since the organic life is never dependent for the constitu- 

 tion of its principle upon another seat, but lives by assimilation. 



20. Hence, death of the organic life in one seat never pro- 

 duces death of the organic life of another directly; but it may pro- 

 duce loss of function directly, as in the instances mentioned : as, if 

 the brain should die, respiration would cease, because respiration is 

 dependent upon the life of the brain; or, if the spinal marrow 

 should die (if this is a true relation of the kind), the action of the 

 heart would cease ; but such death of a primary seat, producing, 

 first, loss of function in a secondary seat, directly, and then universal 

 death indirectly, produces universal death, or death of the organic 

 life, by the relation which functions have with the formation or cir- 

 culation of the blood, upon which the existence of the assimilating 

 life in every sphere depends. 



21. Death is, as before remarked, produced by secondary 

 disease, directly; and the modes of death, according to causation 

 here, are the same as the modes of the extinction of function, viz. by 

 addition or subtraction of properties: as the properties are not 

 objects of the senses, we cannot determine by analysis which of these 

 modes obtains in the several examples. But, in agreement with a 

 loose rule of analogy, before proposed, we should be inclined to in- 

 fer, that death happens by privation of properties, where it succeeds 



