4 Vctermary Medicine. 



balance of all the bodily functions, and any interference with 

 such mutual exercise or balance may be said to constitute dis- 

 ease. But as health passes into disease by insensible gradations, 

 there is of necessity an extensive borderland which often cannot 

 be allotted to one condition or the other, but which must often be 

 left a disputed territory. 



Again certain animal constitutions are innately strong and ro- 

 bust, while others are weak and feeble, yet the delicacy of the 

 latter cannot be set down as actual disease, and by maintaining a 

 due balance between the functions, a fair measure of health and 

 even long life may be secured. 



Death as the result of disease may be €\\y\<tx partial or somatic. 



Partial or local death may be molecular as in ulceration, or 

 it may affect an organ or part of an organ, as in necrosis, spha- 

 celus, or sloughing. Somatic death is a loss of vitahty of the 

 entire body and is manifested by a complete cessation of the bod- 

 ily functions, including that of nutrition. Usually the arrest be- 

 gins with one of the great vital processes, in advance of the oth- 

 ers, and thus in different cases, we have death beginning at the 

 hearty at the lungs, and at the brain. 



Death from syncope or fainting, begins at the heart, which 

 loses its irritability or contractility, or is seized with a tonic 

 spasm. If there has been lack of contractility, the heart is 

 found after death in a flabby, soft condition, and quite frequently 

 filled with blood. If heart-spasm, it is contracted, firm, and 

 empty or nearly so. Syncope may result from severe nervous 

 shock (emotional), from the electric current, from insolation, or 

 from heart sedatives like chloroform, or nicotine. It may, how- 

 ever be but the culmination of a gradually advancing debility, 

 from exhausting diseases, from fatty degeneration of the cardiac 

 muscles, or from starvation, or anaemia. Again the exhaustion 

 coming from profuse haemorrhage, or from violent over-exertion 

 is a cause of fatal syncope. 



In death beginning at the lungs (apnoea, asphyxia, or suffo- 

 cation), the blood failing to receive oxygen and to give up its 

 carbon dioxide is unable to maintain the various functions of the 

 body and the arrest of the other vital processes speedily follows. 

 The arrest of the respiratory process may occur from nervous 

 shock, but more commonly it results from choking, strangula- 



