174 DR. PHILIP ON THE NATURE OF DEATH. 



of sympathy spreads to other parts. We may be assured there is, in all, the capability 

 of long life if they can escape the effects of disease. Thus it is that those who lead 

 a quiet and retired life, little exposed to powerful impressions either of mind or body, 

 often attain a great age. It is an additional motive for watching the state of health 

 at advanced periods of life, that the longer we live the less in general is our suffering 

 at the last ; the nature of our death partaking the more of that of old age. For the 

 further consideration of this subject I beg to refer to my Treatise On the Preservation 

 of Healthy and 'particularly the Prevention of Organic Diseases. 



ALL modes of death, with the exception of that from old age, may be regarded as 

 more or less violent ; but in considering their nature, we must not confound the last 

 act of dying with the suffering which precedes it, and which is often no less when it 

 terminates in recovery than in death, which equally relieves it ; and as death, in the 

 usual acceptation of the word, from whatever cause it arises, consists in the loss of 

 the sensorial functions alone, the act of dying is, in this respect, in all cases essentially 

 the same. In all my experiments I found the nervous and muscular surviving the sen- 

 sorial functions *=. 



When the animal no longer feels and wills, he is what we call dead ; but for a cer- 

 tain time the motion of the blood in every part of the system still continues, and all 

 the assimilating functions still go on, as may be demonstrated by dividing the vital 

 nerves immediately after death, which produces the same change of structure in the 

 organs supplied by them, though in a less degree, as during the life of the animal-j- ; 

 and that all this would be the case, a knowledge of the animal economy would have 

 told us, independently of the aid of experiment, if we could, without this aid, have 

 acquired it. 



The removal of the sensorial powers neither destroys the muscular power nor de- 

 prives the muscles of involuntary motion of the stimulus which excites them. The 

 heart, indeed, is incapable of its function, because, from the interruption of respi- 

 ration, its left side is no longer supplied with the kind of blood which is its natural 

 stimulant; and the accumulation of the blood in the lungs from the same cause af-. 

 fecting a great proportion of its vessels, prevents the right side from emptying itself. 

 These are the necessary and almost immediate effects of the interruption of respi- 

 ration ; but the change in the blood of all the capillaries, with the exception of those 

 which belong to this class of vessels, necessarily takes place more slowly. A certain 

 time must always elapse before the stoppage of respiration greatly affects it. It has 

 been sent to these vessels more or less in its proper state, and it still finds its vessels 

 capable of being influenced by their usual stimulant;}:. Thus, as I have ascertained 



* Experimental Inquiry, Part II. chap. xi. 



t Ibid. pp. 175, 176, compared with a paper which the Society did me the honour to publish in the Philoso- 

 phical Transactions for 1827, entitled. Some Observations on the Effects of dividing the Nerves of the Lungs, S^c. 

 J Philosophical Transactions for 1833. 



