DR. PHILIP ON THE NATURE OF DEATH. 185 



vital properties to the sensitive parts of the brain and spinal marrow, and by their 

 capability of being excited by inanimate agents to the world which surrounds us, 

 form the links which connect and enable to conduce to one end the operations of the 

 sensitive organs, namely, the immediate organs of the sensorial powers, and the ope- 

 rations of inanimate nature ; two classes of operations which have nothing in com- 

 mon. Let us here pause to consider more particularly the positions stated in this 

 paragraph. 



However repugnant it may be to our preconceived opinions, we shall, I think, when 

 the whole of the facts on the subject are carefully weighed, find it impossible to avoid 

 the conclusion, that all the vital functions, and all those functions of the sensitive 

 system by which the sensorial powers influence and are influenced by the external 

 world, are the results of inanimate agents acting on living parts, or living parts on 

 them. Such, as far as I am capable of judging, must be the conclusion, if we com- 

 pare the results of experiments, an account of which has been laid before the Society, 

 and published in their Transactions ^, with observations too simple to require any 

 illustration from experiment. 



With regard to the first of these classes, the vital functions, it is evident that the 

 functions of the alimentary canal are excited by the food, of the lungs by the air, and 

 of the heart and blood-vessels by the stimulating contents of the blood. 



The blood, as it circulates in the vessels, is justly said to be alive. It possesses pro- 

 perties essentially different from those of inanimate matter ; but we know that it is 

 not by its vital properties, which are bestowed on it for other purposes, that it stimu- 

 lates the heart and vessels, because its stimulating contents, when separated from it, 

 produce the same effects on them. The experiments relating to the evolution of the 

 caloric which supports animal temperature, point out one of the purposes answered by 

 the vital properties of the blood-f-, and all the experiments relating to secretion and 

 the other assimilating processes, point out the other purposes of its vitality. It pos- 

 sesses vital properties, not for the purpose of acting on other parts, but for that of duly 

 responding to the inanimate agent, which acts on it in all these processes ; for that the 

 secreting and other assimilating processes depend on the action of an inanimate 

 agent, appears from the experiments which prove that they depend on the nervous 

 influence, which has been shown by direct experiment to be capable of its functions 

 after it has been made to pass through other conductors than the nerves :{:, and can- 

 not therefore have the properties of a vital power; to say nothing of those experi- 

 ments by which it has been shown that all its functions may be performed by an agent 

 which operates in inanimate nature §. 



With regard to those functions by which the intercourse of the sensitive parts of 



* Philosophical Transactions for 1817, 1822, 1827 and 1829 ; and Experimental Inquiry, Part. II. chap. xii. 

 t Experimental Inquiry, Part. II. Experiments 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85 and 86. 



I Philosophical Transactions for 1822, 1829 and 1833j and Experimental Inquiry, Part. II. chap. xii. 

 § Ibid. 

 MDCCCXXXIV. 2 B 



