190 DR. PHILIP ON THE NATURE OF DEATH. 



and similar observations apply to the effects of the offending cause on all the other 

 vital organs. Although such are uniformly its effects on the parts on which it 

 operates, its effects on the system in general, in consequence of the sympathies of our 

 frame, admit of greater variety. These also may be divided into two classes. 



In considering the second of the forms of death in which the impression of the offend- 

 ing cause is confined to the organs of the sensitive system, it appeared that when it is 

 both violent and sudden, it immediately, in consequence of the sympathy of the sen- 

 sitive and vital parts of the brain and spinal marrow, and the influence of the latter 

 on the heart and blood-vessels, destroys the circulation*; whereas, when less power- 

 ful, it proves fatal, not only more slowly, but also in a different way. A similar ob- 

 servation applies to the causes of death which make their impression on the vital 

 organs ; for the circumstance of their being more or less violent and sudden, or making 

 their impression on an organ more or less immediately essential to life, not only ren- 

 ders their effects more or less sudden, but essentially influences their nature. 



When the cause affects an organ immediately essential to life, and is of such power 

 as at once to destroy its function, death, depending wholly on the loss of that func- 

 tion, maybe instantaneous ; but when the cause operates less rapidly, or affects organs 

 less immediately essential to life, death is not only more protracted, but the various 

 causes of continued irritation which attend derangement of the vital, influencing the 

 state of the sensitive system, it often arises as much from the impression made indi- 

 rectly on the organs of this system, as on those to which the cause is applied, and 

 sometimes more so. Thus, any cause which suddenly destroys the function of the 

 heart or lungs, at once proves fatal, and the cause of death is simply the loss of a 

 function immediately essential to life ; but a loss of function in the intestines produces, 

 not immediate death, but a series of causes of irritation, which exhaust the powers of 

 the sensitive system, and death arises as much from this cause as from loss of function 

 in the seat of the injury. Thus a blow on the stomach may instantly prove fatal by 

 the impression it makes on the vital parts of the brain and spinal marrow without pro- 

 ducing any other cause of derangement -f; but inflammation of that organ, by the torture 

 it occasions, often exhausts the powers of the sensitive system, before the inflammation 

 has time to run the course that would prove fatal by its effects on the stomach itself. 



We observe the same thing in a more remarkable degree where the organ is still 

 less immediately essential to life, and the disease consequently is more protracted. It 

 is in this way that stone in the bladder proves fatal. If such local mischief do not 

 occur as disturbs the usual course of the disease, life terminates in the same way as 

 from torture, only more slowly as the suffering is less severe and continued, that is, in 

 a morbid debility of the powers of the sensitive system, more or less, according to 

 circumstances, affecting the vital parts of the brain and spinal marrow, and the last 



* Philosophical Transactions for 1815; and Experimental Inquiry, Part 11. chap. ii. 

 t Ibid. 



