204 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lent death, is liable to persist for a time after life is extinct. From 

 observation at this execution, as well as at the subsequent exami- 

 nation of the body, the current appears at first not only to extin- 

 guish life in the ordinary sense of the word, so far as conscious- 

 ness, feeling, and volition are concerned, with overwhelming sud- 

 denness, but reaches beyond this, and destroys the energies of the 

 individual component parts of the body, so that they can not be 

 raised into activity by artificial mechanical stimulation, as is usu- 

 ally the case in sudden violent death/' 



The same thought has been applied to the phenomena of bat- 

 tlefield rigor. M. Armand wrote of the Magenta cases in 1859, 

 "Death came so sudden that hands holding weapons had not time 

 to let go." Dr. Brinton, in 1865, wrote, " The muscles had, as it 

 were, been surprised by death, and limbs remained set and fixed 

 in the position held at the moment of receiving the fatal wound." 



Lightning strokes have produced like phenomena. Men and 

 animals have been found dead in upright postures, a horse even 

 standing on all fours, with his eyes wide open and nostrils dilated 

 by the terror which the storm evoked. If rigidity can be instan- 

 taneous in any one case, why not in another where similar causes 

 work upon the same elements ? 



There is still a link awaiting further physiological research 

 to connect the manifestations attending deaths in battle action 

 with those under the electric current. Huxley asserted that the 

 matter of life depends on carbonic acid, water, and ammonia 

 brought together under certain conditions, and that the with- 

 drawal of any one of them puts an end to vital phenomena ; also, 

 that every form of human action is resolvable into muscular con- 

 tractions, or transitory changes in the relative positions of the 

 parts of a muscle. In 1868 he said : " Perhaps it would not yet 

 be safe to say that all forms of protoplasm are affected by electric 

 shocks ; and yet the number of cases in which the contraction of 

 protoplasm is shown to be affected by this agency increases every 

 day." 



Therefore the sudden appearance of agents in the nature of 

 electricity and heat may change the combination of acid, water, 

 and ammonia that causes the constant transition of the molecules 

 of a muscle, and when that proportion changes and transition 

 ceases, everything is at a dead stop until other combinations set 

 in motion other changes that give rise to a new order of phe- 

 nomena. The first stage is vital life, the last putrefaction, and 

 the interim rigidity. The electric current causes unconsciousness 

 and muscular death at one stroke. In battle the wound may pro- 

 duce swift unconsciousness. May it not also let loose a stored 

 supply of heat to augment the already intense heat distributed 

 by the energy of passion and physical action and thus stiffen the 



