CHAPTER XIV 



DEATH AND DISSOLUTION OF THE ORGANISM 



I. It is an old saying that we cannot understand 

 life unless we understand death. The dead body, if 

 its temperature is not too low and if it contains enough 

 water, undergoes rapid disintegration. It was natural 

 to argue that life is that which resists this tendency to 

 disintegration. The older observers thought that the 

 forces of nature determined the decay, while the vital 

 force resisted it. This idea found its tersest expres- 

 sion in the definition of Bichat, that "life is the sum 

 total of the forces which resist death." Science is not 

 the field of definitions, but of prediction and control. 

 The problem is: first, how does it happen that as soon 

 as respiration has ceased only for a few minutes the 

 human body is dead, that is to say, will commence to 

 undergo disintegration, and second, what protects the 

 body against this decay while the respiration goes on, 

 although temperature and moisture are such as to 

 favour decay? 



The earlier biologists had already raised the question 



349 



