DR. PHILIP ON THE NATURE OF DEATH. 177 



ferent from the healthy exhaustion, that instead of being relieved by the continued 

 action of the vital parts of the brain and spinal marrow, it spreads to them. Hence 

 the nutritive and other vital processes begin to fail*, and the various irritations which 

 attend their failure, still further contribute to the debility of the sensitive system, and 

 consequently, indirectly, to increase the cause of their failure. The derangement of 

 each system thus aggravating that of the other, the evil proceeds not by simple ad- 

 dition, but in an increasing ratio, till all their powers are extinguished. 



WHATEVER be the suffering which precedes what is called death, the moment of 

 that death is but its termination, but the conclusion, as far as our feelings are con- 

 cerned, of the process of dying. As soon as disease is established the act of dying is 

 begun, and we have no reason to believe that, as far as the body is concerned, its nature 

 is in any respect changed in what is called its termination. It is, from the first to the 

 final ceasing of all the functions, a more rapid than natural decay of the powers of 

 life, with, while sensibility lasts, more or less suffering, according to the cause which 

 produces it. In recovery, our suffering terminates by the removal of that cause ; in 

 what is called death, by our becoming insensible to its effects ; the bodily process 

 being in no other way influenced by our total insensibility, to which the name of 

 death is applied, but that the consequent ceasing of respiration accelerates it. 



The body at this moment can no more be regarded as in the act of dying than at 

 any other period of the disease ; and the removal of the offending cause will not only 

 in many cases at this period, if proper means be employed, but in some, even a short 

 time after it, be followed by recovery. Thus, even after the period at which, according 

 to the common meaning of the word, the process of dying is completed, it is, under 

 certain circumstances, not too late to arrest that process, and restore the sufferer to 

 the perfect enjoyment of his faculties. Recovery may take place after respiration 

 has, from submersion, for a few minutes ceased, and the sufferer is, in the common 

 acceptation of the term, dead, his sensibility, and consequently his respiration, inde- 

 pendently of artificial means, being finally extinguished. 



That this may happen, it is necessary not only that the vital system should have 

 been just before in a state of healthful vigour, but also that the respiration should not 

 have failed from the failing sensibility, but the operation of the offending cause. Here 

 the sensibility fails from the failure of respiration, not, as in other cases, the respi- 

 ration from the failure of the sensibility; but this difference in the succession of 

 events makes no difference in the general nature of the actual state induced. 



The recovery depends on our being able, more or less perfectly, to restore the func- 

 tion, the failure of which has caused the failure of all the others, as far as it has taken 



* That the assimilating processes depend on the action of the nervous influence on the blood, appears from 

 various experiments, an account of which has been laid before the Society. Many of these experiments are 

 detailed at greater length, and others, illustrating the same position, added in my Inquiry into the Laws of the 

 Vital Functions, Pai't II. chap, v., vii. and viii. 



MDCCCXXXIV. 2 A 



