DR. PHILIP ON THE NATURE OF DEATH. 1/3 



The redundance of excitability in children, the cause of many evils, we may be 

 assured answers some important end. There is reason to believe that it is on it that 

 the growth of the body depends, and that the due proportion between the excitability 

 and the stimulants of life, by the gradual diminution of the former, determines the 

 period at which the growth is completed in each individual. While the excitability 

 contirmes redundant, the ordinary stimulants of life necessarily support a greater acti- 

 vity of the functions than is required for the mere maintenance of the body, and thus 

 its volume enlarges, on the same principle that we have just seen it shrinks in the 

 aged, in consequence of their excitability having become defective. It seems to be 

 on this principle, namely, by a premature exhaustion of the excitability, that the hard- 

 ships of life, that is, the greater than usual application of its stimulants, check the 

 growth. On the same principle we should expect to find that the growth would cease 

 soonest in the most excitable habits, because in them the excitability will soonest be 

 reduced to a due balance with the stimulants of life. Thus it seems to be that the 

 growth of women, who are more excitable than men, generally stops sooner, and con- 

 sequently that they are of shorter stature, large women, for the most part, having less 

 of the habit peculiar to their sex ; and that by far the greater number of the most 

 excitable men, who, in consequence of this constitution, make the greatest figure in 

 their day, are men of short stature, while giants are generally of an opposite habit of 

 body. There must, of course, to such rules be many exceptions. Where so many 

 causes are operating, no result can be uniform. 



THE form of death above described is the only one which, strictly speaking, can be 

 regarded as natural. In all its other forms the regular course is disturbed by adven- 

 titious causes. But the causes which interfere with the regular course of nature, 

 and which make their impression either directly on our bodies, or through the 

 medium of our mental powers, are, in civilized society, so numerous and complicated, 

 that it is rare to see an instance of such a death. At whatever period death arrives, 

 it is almost always the effect of disease ; and at advanced periods of life we only 

 become more liable to death in consequence of our weakened powers rendering us 

 more subject to disease. 



Of the various instances of death I have witnessed, there was none that could be 

 regarded as wholly the effect of age. It was always possible to point out some one or 

 more of the vital organs more deranged than the rest, to which death was chiefly to 

 be ascribed. We have, however, accounts of death from old age alone, which were 

 such as has just been described, so that the inferences afforded by the laws of the 

 animal economy are here confirmed by experience. 



If we wish to prolong life, we must keep the attention so far directed to the health 

 as to watch the first tendency to failure in any of the vital functions. In a great 

 majority of instances, to a very late period of life, the failure in the commencement 

 is capable of being corrected. By continuance it becomes obstinate, and by the laws 



