180 DR. PHILIP ON THE NATURE OF DEATH. 



only producing a state analogous to the healthy exhaustion of the sensitive system 

 but greater in degree, its influence is throughout confined to that system ='^, In the 

 former case we see all the vital functions deranged ; in the latter, the breathing alone 

 affected, except as far as its state affects the others, death arising merely from respi- 

 ration ceasing in consequence of the loss of sensibility ; and so exclusively is this 

 sometimes the case, that I had occasion to refer to an instance in which the patient 

 breathed only two or three times in the last ten minutes, but each time drew the air 

 freely into the lungs ; a proof that he died without any accumulation of phlegm there, 

 and consequently without any disorder of the vital functions, but such as arose from 

 the increasing insensibility -j-. Here the failing powers of the sensitive afffected the 

 vital system in no other way than in sleep, the only diff*erence being the degree in 

 which the sensibility was impaired. Such cases are extremely rare. In by far the ma- 

 jority, from some inequality in the effects, or other peculiarity of the cause of pres- 

 sure, at the same time that the sensibility is morbidly impaired, either a diseased state 

 of a diff'erent kind is induced on the sensitive parts of the brain, which, as soon as 

 established, begins to spread to the vital parts of that organ, or the cause of the disease 

 itself more immediately affects the latter. 



In the more rapid cases, the diseased state of the sensitive, which spreads to the 

 vital parts of the brain and spinal marrow, supervenes without being preceded by a 

 state of exhaustion, only differing from sleep in being greater in degree, in proportion 

 as the stimulants which produce it are more powerful and protracted. 



The effects of diseased states of the sensitive on the vital parts of the brain and spinal 

 marrow, differ according to the nature and degree of the offending cause. When 

 they are such as in the first instance to produce a state analogous to sleep, their inju- 

 rious effects are necessarily more or less gradual, the first operation of the agent dif- 

 fering only in degree from that of the usual stimulants of life; but where the offending 

 cause is more powerful in degree, or of a more injurious nature, the stage of exhaustion 

 is lost, and the immediate eff*ect on the sensitive system is that species of debility which 

 the vital parts of the brain and spinal marrow having no power to relieve, partake 



* It appears from experiments related in my Inquiry into the Laws of the Vital Functions, that simple and 

 uniform pressure of the brain does not produce such a state of the vital parts of that organ as to derange the 

 circulation, the effect of such pressure on the sensitive organs of the brain being of the same nature, as far as 

 relates to the vital system, as the exhaustion occasioned by the exercise of their functions ; which further ap- 

 pears from the whole functions of health being immediately restored on the removal of the pressure, which only 

 proves fatal by its continuance more and more impairing, and at length destroying, the sensibility. (Experi- 

 mental Inquiry, Part II. Experiment 18.) Many years ago, a man in whom the ossification of the skuU had 

 never been completed, exhibited himself in this country. By pressure made on the unossified part he was im- 

 mediately brought into a state of apoplexy, which always disappeared, leaving him wholly uninjured, on the 

 removal of the pressure. 



t It has been shown by many experiments, detailed in the Philosophical Transactions, and in the second part 

 of my Inquiry into the Laws of the Vital Functions, that derangement of the assimilating functions is always 

 attended with accumulation of phlegm in the lungs, this being the first indication of derangement of these func- 

 tions in them. , » 



