THE PROCESS OF DEATH. 315 



one of these three organs, the heart, th: lungs, or the 

 brain. Life, they said in their inaccurate language, 

 depends upon these as upon three supports. Hence 

 the idea of the vital tripod. But it is not only this 

 trio of organs which maintain the organism ; the 

 kidney and the liver are no less important. In 

 different degrees each part exercises its action on the 

 rest. Life is based in reality on the immense 

 multitude of living cells associated for the formation 

 of the body ; on the thirty trillion anatomical ele- 

 ments, each part is more or less necessary to all the 

 rest, according as the bond of solidarity is drawn more 

 or less closely in the organism under consideration. 



Death and the Brain. — There are indeed more noble 

 elements charged with higher functions than the rest. 

 These are the nervous elements. Those of the brain 

 preside over the higher functions of animality, sensi- 

 bility, voluntary movement, and the exercise of the 

 intellect. The rest of the nervous system forms an 

 instrument of centralization which establishes the 

 relations of the parts one with the other and secures 

 their solidarity. When the brain is stricken and its 

 functions cease, man has lost the consciousness of his 

 existence. Life seems to have disappeared. We say 

 of a man in this plight that he no longer lives, thus 

 confusing general life with the cerebral life which is 

 its highest manifestation. But the man or the 

 animal without a brain lives what may be called a 

 vegetative life. The human anencephalic foetus lives 

 for some time, just as the foetus which is properly 

 formed. Observation always shows that this exist- 

 ence of the other parts of the body cannot be sus- 

 tained indefinitely in the absence of that of the brain. 

 By a series of impulses due to the solidarity of the 



