272 DEATH 



it is true that from personal experience I can say 

 nothing on the subject of death ; but this is a 

 disqualification which I share with all members of 

 our Society, and with all living men. If nobody is 

 to be allowed to talk about death until he has 

 qualified by personal acquaintance with the " fell 

 sergeant," it is clear that any knowledge to be 

 derived, any lessons to be learnt from its study, are 

 lost to us for ever. 



My choice of the subject has been determined 

 mainly by the consideration that of recent years it 

 has attracted considerable attention, and has given 

 rise to interesting speculations, many of which are 

 based on facts made known to us by those extra- 

 ordinarily minute investigations into the structure 

 of the lower animals, which the modern improve- 

 ments in microscopical methods and appliances have 

 rendered possible. My purpose this evening is to 

 give a summary of these more recent contributions 

 to our knowledge of the nature and causation 

 of death, and an indication of the paths along 

 which it seems probable that advances will be made 

 in the future. 



In a scientific enquiry it is above all things 

 desirable to have clear ideas as to the nature of the 

 subject we are dealing with. Unfortunately it is 

 not easy to define with any degree of precision what 

 it is that we understand by death. Gotte regards 

 death as something inherent in life itself, a view 

 which is held more or less explicitly by the majority 

 of mankind. This is however disputed by Weis- 

 mann, whose contributions to the subject are of 



