DR. PHILIP ON THE NATURE OF DEATH. 195 



lants alone that the functions of life are maintained. In the different kinds of violent 

 death, with the exception of the death which arises from a failure of the natural sti- 

 mulants of the vital organs, which is comparatively rare and extremely simple in its 

 nature, we find the excitability of one or both of these systems, or some parts of one 

 or both of them, capable of influencing all the others, more quickly destroyed by the 

 continued operation of causes which either stimulate beyond the limits of health, or, 

 applied beyond the limits of their stimulant operation, destroy the powers of life, either 

 by directly destroying the powers of the sensitive system or depriving it of those 

 powers by which it is maintained. All these causes, it is evident, tend to the same 

 effect, the extinction of the sensibility, which constitutes death according to the 

 common acceptation of the term, the immediate cause of which, therefore, exists in 

 the sensitive parts of the brain and spinal marrow. 



Thus it appears that, in every instance, — for it will be found, I believe, that there is 

 no case of death which may not be referred to one of the foregoing heads, — what is 

 called death and the loss of sensibility are one and the same, and therefore that the 

 last act of dying can in no instance be an act of suffering; and this we have seen con- 

 firmed by direct observation, as far as the observation of the bystander can confirm 

 it; to which may be added the experience of the sufferer himself, because those who, 

 from submersion or other similar causes, have passed that portion of the act of dying 

 where suffering can alone take place, and who have, as above explained, been in 

 the common sense of the word dead, and in consequence of the degree of vigour still 

 remaining in the vital organs restored by inflating the lungs, declare that they had been 

 sensible of no suffering but such as arises from a less degree of the same cause which in 

 them had wholly extinguished sensibility ; an observation well illustrated by the cir- 

 cumstance, that those who are restored by artificial respiration, and could not have 

 returned to life without this aid, and those whose breathing, not having been long 

 enough suspended wholly to destroy the sensibility, and who consequently, althougli 

 to all appearance equally insensible, in a short time after the cause is removed, breathe 

 spontaneously, give precisely the same account of their sufferings. 



In those in whom the sensibility has been extinguished by submersion, it is in the 

 first part of the process by which they recover, not in the last part of that by which 

 they lose it, that they suffer, which it is not difficult to explain. 



In the latter the sensibility is almost lost before it is wholly so. The apoplectic who 

 has still feeling enough to breathe, who may still be roused to remove the extreme 

 cause of suffering which the want of a supply of air in the lungs occasions, may be in- 

 sensible to all other causes of excitement ; for in proportion to the immediate import- 

 ance of that supply, is the feeling which impels us to obtain it. We have instances 

 of the hand being voluntarily held in the fire ; but none, of the breathing volun- 

 tarily stopped till the lungs were injured. The circumstance of the breathing, inde- 

 pendently of artificial means, being finally lost, is a proof that the sensibility is wholly 

 extinguished ; and as its extinction in such a case must be more or less gradual, the 



2 c 2 



