146 BIOLOGY. [BOOK n. 



Parts losing more than the average. Parts losing less than the average. 



0,400 . 0,400 



.Fat 0,933 Stomach 0,397 



Blood 0,750 Pharynx, oasophagus . 0,342 



Spleen 0,714 Skin 0,338 



Pancreas ..... 0,641 Kidneys 0,319 



Liver 0,520 Respiratory apparatus . 0,223 



Heart 0,448 Osseous system . . .0,167 



Intestines 0,424 Eyes 0,100 



Locomotive muscles . . 0,423 Nervous system . . . 0,019 



A very curious fact arising out of this table, is the feeble 

 deperdition undergone by the nervous centres, even at the 

 moment of death. We may say that, before dying, they have 

 really devoured the other organs, and it is to their almost 

 complete integrity that we must trace the relative integrity of 

 the intellectual faculties observed in men in a state of inanition 

 up to the moment of death. 



The physiological disturbances proceeding from abstinence are 

 not less interesting to study. The temperature of the body 

 gradually lowers, in proportion as the nutritive movement isj 

 retarded. Chossat, experimenting upon various animals, guinea- 

 pigs, rabbits, crows, turtle-doves, pigeons, chickens, has found 

 3 degrees to be the daily average lowering of the temperature, 

 with a more considerable depression the last day. At the 

 moment of death, the average heat of the body falls to 24'9. 



Normally the nutritive movement is retarded during the night, 

 and the temperature, which strictly depends upon it, falls in hot- 

 blooded animals to about 0'74; but during abstinence this 

 oscillation is always augmented with regard to amplitude and 

 duration, and the thermometric depression reaches 3 0< 28. 



The secretions and excretions are also closely connected with 

 the nutritive movement, since their principal function is defini- 

 tively to expulse the products of dis-assimilation or to favour the 



