DR. PHILIP ON THE NATURE OP DEATH. 197 



supposed exclusively, to the vegetable world ; but as we see plants, the mushroom 

 tribe, possessed of no organizing power, and therefore, like animals, nourished only 

 by matter already organized, some of the lower species of animals, on the other hand, 

 seem to possess this power. Thus, it would appear that there is a class of animals and 

 of plants in which the animal and .vegetable, in this essential respect, exchange their 

 natures. As the animal becomes imperfect, and approaches the nature of the vegetable, 

 the sensorial powers dwindle, and the lowest animals appear to extract their nutri- 

 ment from air and water, which, being generally diffused, are at hand, and conse- 

 quently obtained without any sensible effort on the part of the animal. His life, there- 

 fore, although not independent of the external world, is, like that of the vegetable, in- 

 dependent of any act of volition. As we rise in the scale of animals, the sensorial 

 powers increase, and, in the same proportion, become more essential to existence. 

 From those animals which obtain food without any act of volition, we come to those 

 who can only obtain it by such an act, but who still without any act of this kind 

 obtain the influence of the air, yet more immediately necessary to their existence. We 

 arrive at length at the most perfect class, which can neither obtain food nor air, ex- 

 cept by an act of the sensorium. In them the sensorial power is as necessary for the 

 inhalation of the air, as the ingestion of the food. When sensation ceases, they as 

 certainly cease to breathe as they cease to eat. Thus it is that in this class of animals 

 the due application of the inanimate agents on which life depends, cannot long sur- 

 vive the loss of the sensorial functions. 



AS we have been enabled, by the aid of the experiments referred to in the foregoing 

 paper, to trace the steps by which the sensibility in the various forms of death is ex- 

 tinguished, that is, of our decay up to that moment which has for very evident reasons 

 obtained the name of death, by the same means we may with more ease trace the 

 steps by which the remaining powers of life are extinguished. 



AS the powers of life fail, we have seen, the first functions which cease are those 

 which wholly depend on these powers. The others, being the results of inanimate 

 agents acting on vital parts, continue as long as those agents are supplied, for the 

 purpose of exciting their organs. The first of these powers which fails is evidently 

 the power of the capillary vessels, because their function continues as long as any 

 blood can be supplied to them from the larger arteries. The circumstance of the 

 action of the capillaries only ceasing when the larger arteries are empty, affords a 

 proof that the assimilating processes, without which their power would fail, are still 

 more or less in a state of activity. These processes, we have seen, are immediately 

 dependent on the vital parts of the brain and spinal marrow. The due mechanism 

 of every part, it appears from direct experiment, depends on the action on the blood 

 of the agent they supply. When the capillaries can no longer supply the blood on 

 which it acts, it is evident that the functions of this agent must cease, and conse- 



