DR. PHILIP ON THE NATURE OF DEATH. 193 



regulate its operations*. We find even in those diseases which are of the most 

 continued form, partly from its operation and partly from the cause of the disease 

 acting more or less interruptedly, more or less evident remissions. Hence, and from 

 a thousand accidental circumstances which influence the course of disease, and many 

 of which it is impossible to trace, we find in diseases of continuance, that at one 

 time the stimulant, at another the sedative effect prevails. Thus the sufferer appears 

 at one time to be sinking, and at another to revive, without our always being able to 

 trace the cause of such variations. All this the complicated nature of the animal body, 

 and the various ways in which it may be influenced, would lead us to expect. We might 

 also be led to expect that it would sometimes happen that when the excitability is nearly 

 exhausted, such a cause of excitement might under certain circumstances occur as 

 would suddenly exhaust that which still remains, and thus, by causing a sudden but 

 temporary revival, prove the prelude to death. Hence what is termed a lightening 

 before death, on which so many superstitions have been founded. This is seldom 

 strongly marked. That it occasionally is so, we have sufficient evidence, and that it 

 should be so, is perfectly consistent with the laws of the animal economy; but it will 

 appear from what has been said, that, like the convulsive motions I have been con- 

 sidering, it has no essential connexion with the act of dying, and is not the conse- 

 quence, but the cause, of its immediate approach. 



Before I proceed to the last part of the subject, namely, the order in which the 

 nervous and muscular functions cease, on which a very few remarks will be suffi- 

 cient, I shall shortly recapitulate the leading features of the different forms of death, 

 without recurring to the other parts of the subject, which are too numerous to 

 admit of recapitulation ; and make such additional observations as the recapitulation 

 suggests. 



WE have seen that the forms of death, — for, as I have already had occasion to ob- 

 serve, the whole operation of the causes of decay in strict language constitutes the act 

 of dying, — may be arranged under five heads. 



1. The only natural death, that from old age, where all the powers of life, in conse- 

 quence of the operation of the agents which excite their organs, gradually decline, and 

 death is only the last sleep, characterized by no peculiarity, in which these powers, 



* Here, as in other instances, tliat imperfection of our present state, which we have reason to believe inse- 

 parable from it, appears. Nature, for example, relieves inflammation sometimes by exciting discharges from 

 the inflamed part, sometimes by the process of suppuration ; but she still employs the same means, although 

 the efl^usion or suppuration by which the inflammation is relieved, from the nature or situation of the part 

 aff^ected, generally proves fatal. Such is the case in croup, the disease termed internal water of the head, in- 

 flammation of many vital organs, &c. In these cases it is the object of the physician to cure the inflammation 

 by artificial means before it has time to run to such terminations. In other instances, as in some external 

 inflammations, his object is to promote these operations of the vis medicatrix, as the least injurious way of 

 removing the disease. 



MDCCCXXXIV. 2 C 



