OF DEATH. 1057 



tissue during life, the more speedily does its Molecular Death follow Somatic 

 Death, the requisite conditions of its vital action being no longer supplied to it. 

 Thus we observe that, in Cold-blooded animals, the supervention of Molecular 

 upon Somatic death is much less speedy than it is in Birds and Mammals. 

 This seems due to two causes. In the first place, the tissues of the former, 

 being at all times possessed of a lower degree of vital activity than those of the 

 latter, are disposed to retain it for a longer time ; according to the principle 

 already laid down. And, secondly, as the maintenance of a high temperature 

 is an essential condition of the vital activity of the tissues of warm-blooded ani- 

 mals, the rapid cooling of the body after Somatic death is calculated to extin- 

 guish it speedily ; and that this cause has a real operation is evinced by the 

 influence of artificial warmth in sustaining the vital properties of separate^ parts. 

 The rapidity with which Molecular death follows the cessation of the general 

 circulation will be influenced by a variety of causes ; but especially by the degree 

 in which the condition of the solids and fluids of the body has been impaired 

 by the mode of death. Thus in Necraemia, Asthenia, and Death by gradual 

 cooling, Molecular and Somatic death may be said to be simultaneous ; and the 

 same appears to be true of death by sudden and violent impressions on the Nerv- 

 ous system ( 321). But in many cases of death by causes which operate by 

 producing a more gradual Syncope or Asphyxia, the tissues and blood having 

 been previously in a healthy condition, Molecular death may be long postponed ; 

 and we cannot be quite certain that it has supervened until signs of actual de- 

 composition present themselves. When Molecular death takes place in an 

 isolated part, it must result from some condition peculiar to that part, and not 

 primarily affecting the body in general. Thus we may have G-angrene or Morti- 

 fication of a limb as adirect result of the application of severe cold, or of an agent 

 capable of producing chemical changes in its substance, or of violent contusions 

 occasioning mechanical injury ; or, again, from an interruption to the current of 

 nutritive fluid ; or, further, from some ill understood stagnation of the nutritive 

 process, which manifests itself in the spontaneous death of the tissues without 

 any assignable cause, as in some cases of senile gangrene. Sometimes we are 

 enabled to trace this stagnation to a disordered condition of the circulating 

 fluid ; as in the gangrene resulting from the continued use of the ergot of rye 

 or wheat ; but we can give no other account of the almost invariable commence- 

 ment of such gangrene in the extremities, than we can of the selection of lead, 

 introduced into the blood, by the extensors of the forearm. When Mortification 

 or Molecular Death is once established in any part, it tends to spread, both to 

 contiguous and to distant portions of the body. Thus we have continually to 

 witness the extension of gangrene of the lower extremities, resulting from 

 severe injury or from the use of the ergot, from the small part first affected, 

 until the whole limb is involved ; and this extension is easily accounted for by 

 our knowledge of the tendency of organic substances, in the act of decomposi- 

 tion, to produce a similar change in other organic substances subjected to the 

 influence of proximity to them. And the propagation of the gangrenous 

 tendency to remoter parts is obviously due to the perversion of the qualities 

 of the Blood, which results from a similar cause. 1 



1068. It is quite certain that an apparent cessation of all the vital functions 

 may take place, without that entire loss of vitality which would leave the organism 

 in the condition of a dead body, liable to be speedily disintegrated by the opera- 

 tion of chemical and physical agencies ( 115). The state of Syncope is some- 



1 On the proximate causes of Death, see especially the Art. "Death," by Dr. Symonds, 

 in the " Cyclop, of Anat. and Phys.," vol. i. ; the first chapter of Prof. Alison's "Outlines 

 of Pathology and Practice of Medicine," and Dr. C. J. B. Williams's " Principles of Medi- 

 cine," pp. 376, 387, Am. ed. 



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