410 OF THE GROWTH AND DECREASE 



nile * dryness and a gradually manifested decrease of 

 vital energy. 



661. Lastly, the frigid condition of old age is accom- 

 panied by an increasing dulness of both the external 

 and internal senses, a necessity for longer sleep, and a 

 torpor of all the functions of the system. The hairs 

 grow white and partly fall off. The teeth gradually 

 drop out. The neck is no longer able to give due sup- 

 port to the head, nor the legs to the body. Even the 

 bones themselves — the props of the machine, in a man- 

 ner waste away, &c.f 



662. Thus we are conducted to the boundary of 

 physiology, — to death without disease,% — to the senile 

 tudavatrta, which it is the first and last object of medi- 

 cine to procure, and the cause of which must be self- 

 evident from our preceding account of the animal 

 economy. § 



663. The phenomena of a moribund person |} are cold- 

 ness of the extremities, loss of brilliancy of the eyes, 

 smallness and slowness of the pulse, which more and 

 more frequently intermits, infrequency of respiration, 

 which at length terminates for ever by a deep expiration. 



* Joach. H. Gcrnet, De siccitatis senilis effectibus. Lips. 1753. 4to. 



f I do not here repeat what I have said at large in my osteological work, 

 p. 36 sq. upon the remarkable wasting of the bones of old men. 



% G. Gottl. Richter, De morte sine tnorbo. Gotting. 1736. 4to. 



§ J. Oosterdyk Schacht, Tr. qua senile fatttm inevitabili necessitate ex hum. 

 cor p. mechanismo sequi demonstrator. Ultraj. 1729. 4tO. 



Matt. Van Geuns, De morte corporea et causis moriendi. LB. 1761. 4to. 

 reprinted in Sandifort's Thesaurus, vol. iii. 



C. G. Ontyd, De morte et varia moriendi ratione. Lugd. Bat. 1791. 8vo. 



Curt. Sprengel, Jnstit. Medic. T. i. Amst. 1809. fevo. page 289 sq. 



|| See the successive progress of the phenomena of death observed by the 

 individual himself, a man of middle age, dying of dysentery, in Monti's magat. 

 ntr ErfahrungfSeelen-Kunde. vol. i. P. i. page 63 sq. 



