196 DR. PHILIP ON THE NATURE OF DEATH. 



capability of acute suffering-, it is evident, must be lost some time before the period 

 at which the want of air in the lungs cannot even be felt. 



In the act of recovery, on the other hand, the sensibility necessarily begins to re- 

 vive before the vital organs perfectly recover their functions after so severe a shock. 

 The sensitive, on its revival, thus finds the vital system still more or less in a state of 

 disease, to which the former, as its powers increase, is every moment becoming more 

 sensible ; for w^hile the powers of both remain, all derangement of the vital is felt by 

 the sensitive system ; a wise provision, by which we are warned to guard against causes 

 of danger confined to the former. 



IT will readily occur from what has been said, to those whom I have the honour to 

 address, that under certain circumstances more than one of the preceding forms of 

 death may concur. The first indeed, the death of old age, may be regarded as so far 

 a combination of more than one of the other forms, that the cause makes its impres- 

 sion on both the sensitive and vital systems ; but its effects on both, as appears from 

 all that has been said, are essentially different from those of disease. 



In certain cases the cause of disease makes its impression on both systems, and 

 then more than one of the last four forms concur. This, I have already had occasion 

 to point out, necessarily happens from mechanical injury of considerable portions 

 either of the brain or spinal marrow. When both systems are directly impressed by 

 the cause of the disease, which is comparatively rare, it produces, as follows from 

 w^hat has been said, a combination of the third and fifth, or second and fifth forms^ 

 according as its efflects are more or less sudden and severe. 



SUCH in different cases, is the varied course of our decay previous to the moment 

 at which the sensibility is extinguished, emphatically called that of death, because it 

 completes the decay of the sensorial powers, and leaves us only those which we pos- 

 sess in common with the vegetable world ; for the vegetable, like the animal, can 

 convey its juices, form its secreted fluids, and in some instances move its limbs, if 

 proper stimulants be applied ; an additional argument, it might be shown, if any were 

 required, for all such functions being the eff"ects of inanimate agents acting on living 

 parts. 



After tlie removal of the sensorial functions, none remain to us but such as are 

 maintained by the immediate action of those agents. Our bodies are hastening to be 

 mingled with the matter of inanimate nature. They retain only those powers which 

 immediately depend on its agents, and these are rapidly failing, because, for reasons 

 which have been pointed out at length *=, the due application of those agents in the 

 more perfect animals cannot long survive the loss of the sensorial powers. 



The power of organizing the elements of inanimate nature belongs, and some have 



* Philosophical Transactions for 1829 ; and Experimental Inquiry, Part II. chap. xi. 



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