178 DR. PHILIP ON THE NATURE OF DEATH. 



place, before the process of dying has proceeded too far for the restoration of the sen- 

 sitive system. If no artificial means are employed, the date of death here is the time 

 at which the sensibility ceased, and justly, because at that time death, according to 

 the common meaning of the word, has taken place. The individual no longer feels 

 and wills. 



If there were even the last remains of sensibility, breathing would take place with- 

 out external aid, as happens when the submersion has not been long enough wholly 

 to extinguish it. The individual has, without such aid, finally ceased to feel and will, 

 and is therefore what we call dead. His blood still continues to move, and all the 

 assimilating processes, as appears from the experiments above referred to, are still 

 going on ; but this is no more than happens, more or less, in all cases after what is 

 called death ; the only difference being that from the nature of the offending cause, and 

 the short duration of the disease, these functions are in a state of greater vigour than 

 when the loss of respiration has been the effect of the loss of sensibility, which makes 

 no difference in the nature either of their remaining powers or the circumstances in 

 which they are placed, and would not prevent their ceasing, as usual, if no means were 

 employed to arrest the dying process. I have dwelt the longer on this case, because 

 it affords *a good illustration of some of the preceding as well as following parts of the 

 subject*. 



THE approach of death, if we are aware of it, must always be more or less impressive, 

 not only because we are about to undergo an unknown change, but are leaving all 



* From the experiments which have been laid before the Society (Philosophical Transactions for 1822, 1827, 

 and 1829, and Experimental Inquiry, Part II. chap, xii.), we have reason to believe that the elFects of artificial 

 respiration in restoring those whose breathing has been interrupted till the sensibility is destroyed, would be 

 greatly aided by the use of voltaic electricity sent through the lungs in the direction of their nerves, and that 

 many might thus be restored in whom inflation of the lungs alone fails. The inflation of the lungs in such 

 cases acts in two ways. It gives to the blood of the smaller vessels of the lungs some of the arterial properties 

 by which they are often excited, and acting through the blood of these vessels, it communicates to that of the 

 larger vessels, and of the heart itself, more or less of the same properties, independently of the blood already 

 changed being moved on towards this organ ; for M. le Gallois has shown that after the circulation has per- 

 manently ceased, the blood may, to a certain degree, be changed by inflating the lungs, not only in the trunks 

 of the pulmonary veins and the heart itself, but even in the great arteries. 



There is reason to believe, from the whole of my experiments, that the lungs should not be inflated more 

 than eight or ten times in the minute, and that the injection of large quantities of air and great force in its 

 injection should be avoided, and consequently the patient placed in the position in which the chest expands 

 with greatest easef. One of the chief defects of artificial breathing is, that in it the chest is expanded by 



■f Experiments relating to the effects of artificial resi^iration in the newly dead animal : Experimental In- 

 quiry, Part II. chap. xii. If the air be thrown in more frequently or in greater quantity than the remaining 

 powers of the lungs are capable of employing, it acts as a cooling process and is highly injurious. It is one of 

 the defects of artificial respiration that we cannot tell either the precise quantity of air or the frequency of its 

 injection required by the particular state of the circulating system in the lungs. We know that in the case 

 before us, the demand cannot be equal to what it is in health. 



