THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 



OF old, the spoils of death fell to the anatomist's share, 

 while the physiologist took for his part the phenomena of 

 life. Now we submit the corpse to the same experiments 

 as the living organism, and pry into the relics of death for 

 the secrets of life. Instead of seeing in the lifeless body 

 mere forms ready to dissolve and vanish, we detect in it 

 forces and persisting activities full of deep instructiveness 

 in their mode of working. As theologians and moralists 

 exhort us to study the spectre of death face to face at 

 times, and strengthen our souls by courageous meditation 

 on our last hour, so medicine regards it as essential to 

 direct our attention toward all the details of that mournful 

 drama, and thus to lead us, through gloom and shadows, to 

 a clearer knowledge of life. But it is only with respect to 

 medicine in the most modern days that this is true. 



Leibnitz, who held profound and admirable theories of 

 life, had one of death also, which he has unfolded in a fa- 

 mous letter to Arnauld. He believes that generation is 

 only the development and evolution of an animal already 

 existing in form, and that corruption or death is only the 

 regnvelopment or involution of the same animal, which 

 does not cease to subsist and continue living. The sum of 

 vital energies, consubstantial with monads, does not vary 

 in the world ; generation and death are but changes in the 

 order and adjustment of the principles of vitality, simple 



