324 LIFE AND DEATH. 



turgescence, fragmentation of the protoplasm, the 

 formation of granules, and the appearance of vacuoles. 



Chemical CJinnges. — O. Loew and Bokorny laid 

 great stress in 1886 and 1896 on the chemical changes. 

 The living protoplasm according to them is an 

 unstable proteid compound. A slight change would 

 detach from the albuminoid molecule a nucleus with 

 the function of aldehyde, and at the same time would 

 transform an amido-group into an amido-group. This 

 would suffice for the transition of the protoplasm from 

 the living to the dead state. This theory is based on 

 the fact that the compounds which exercise a toxic 

 action on the living cell, without acting chemically on 

 the dead albumin, are easily fixed by the aldehydes ; 

 and on the fact that many of them, which attack 

 simultaneously the living albuminoids and the dead 

 albumin, easily combine with the amido-group. 



E. Pfluger, a celebrated German scientist, has 

 considered living matter as an albumin spontaneously 

 decomposable, the essential nucleus of which is formed 

 by cyanogen. Its active instability would be due to 

 the penetration into the molecule of the oxygen which 

 fixes on the carbon and separates it from the nitrogen. 

 Armand Gautier has not confirmed this view. 

 Duclaux (1898) has stated that the difference between 

 the living and the dead albumin would be of a stereo- 

 chemical order. 



Progressive Character of Death. Accidental Death. 

 — We have seen that in general the disappearance of 

 the characteristics of vitality is not instantaneous, at 

 least in the natural course of things, in complex organ- 

 isms. It is the end of a more or less rapid process. But 

 death is not instantaneous in the isolated anatomical 

 element any more than it is in the protozoan or 



