182 DR. PHILIP ON THE NATURE OF DEATH. 



to this laWj and the stimulant and sedative effect of different agents bear no particular 

 proportion to each other ; but the greater the stimulant power of the agent, it must 

 be applied to the greater extent to produce the sedative effect, and the greater its 

 sedative power, in the smaller extent, to obtain from it the stimulant effect. The pro- 

 portion which the stimulant and sedative effects of the same agent bear to each other 

 is always the same, that is, its mode of application and the state of the body being the 

 same ; for the more gradual the application, the more the stimulant ; the more sudden, 

 the more the sedative effect prevails ; and the less vigorous the functions, the less they 

 are capable of the stimulant, and the more they are subject to the sedative effect. 

 Thus torture, which, in the hardy savage, produces sleep, that is, the exhaustion which 

 is the effect of the stimulant operation, acts as a sedative in the less robust Eu- 

 ropean. While the former sleeps, the latter dies ; and the more sudden its application 

 the less the constitution is capable of resisting it. 



The sedative effect, in whatever degree, is of a nature so different from the ex- 

 haustion which constitutes sleep, that its tendency always is to prevent the latter ; 

 and when the stimulant operation of the causes of disease exceeds that of the usual 

 stimulants of life, and thus tends to the sedative effect, in the same proportion the 

 tendency of these causes, although in the first instance to produce sleep proportioned 

 to their stimulant effect, is eventually to prevent it. The repetition of fatigue at 

 length produces fever, not sleep. 



Such being the principles on which all agents capable of affecting the living animal 

 operate, we readily perceive why the more sudden and powerful the cause of disease, 

 the more it inclines directly to produce a state of debility, and when it is most so, 

 why this tendency is unmixed with any degree of the stimulant effect. 



But it is not necessary, as appears from what is said of nervous apoplexy in the 

 preceding paper, that the operation of the agent should be either violent or sudden, 

 to produce, even in the first instance, more or less of the sedative effect, if it be of 

 a nature suited to produce it. In proportion as its application is less powerful, 

 however, its peculiar effects are necessarily so also. Instead of preventing the 

 tendency to sleep, it only impairs it ; and the morbid state of the brain and spinal 

 marrow shows itself by symptoms which less immediately threaten life. The sedative 

 effect of agents may exist in all possible degrees, from the effect of the rage and joy 

 which has produced instant death, to that of the settled grief, which only in the 

 course of years destroys its victim ; from the pain of a scald so extensive as to pro- 

 duce death in a few minutes, to the irritations of confirmed indigestion, under which 

 the patient often lingers for a great portion of life. Whether the effects be sudden or 

 gradual, the tendency, in all such cases, is the same, to terminate in a state of general 

 debility, that is, nervous apoplexy, in which all the powers of the system are equally 

 impaired. 



The first impression of the cause is on the sensitive parts of our frame, which, 

 without previous excitement proportioned to the debility which ensues, impairs their 



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