441 



The slowness, the rigidity, and the difficulty of moving, do not depend 

 so much as is thought, on the induration of the ligaments and other 

 fibrous organs : these ligaments become softened and relaxed to a con- 

 siderable degree, so that luxation is more easily performed, after death, 

 in old people. In them, likewise, organs, which, in youth, have a de- 

 gree of consistency, become flaccid and soft: this is the case with the 

 heart, which becomes collapsed in old people, its cavities remaining en- 

 tire, while in young persons, and in adults, their parietes are not in close 

 contact. 



The brain becomes harder and firmer, less soluble in alkalies; its 

 albumen appears more completely oxydized than in younger subjects : 

 impressions are less easily made, and the motions necessary to the ope- 

 rations of the understanding are performed with difficulty. Hence, in 

 decrepitude, man returns, as far as relates to his intellectual faculties, to 

 a state of second childhood, limited to certain recollections, which are 

 at first confused, and, in the end, completely lost, incapable of judgment 

 or will, or of new impressions ; sleep resumes its influence ; reduced to 

 a mere vegetative existence, he sleeps the greatest part of the day, and 

 wakens only to satisfy his physical wants, and to take food, which he 

 digests very imperfectly; for, in the first place, the want of teeth pre- 

 vents his being able to divide sufficiently the different substances, and iu 

 the next place, the supply of saliva, of gastric and intestinal juices, is al- 

 most interrupted ; the bile and other fluids are less active, and the intes- 

 tinal tube is without energy. Universal rigidity will be admitted as one 

 of the principal causes of death, if it be considered that women, in whom, 

 the organs are naturally softer, are longer in reaching that state^ are more 

 retentive of life than men, and generally live to a greater age. 



The body, therefore, dies slowly, and by degrees, says the eloquent 

 De Buffon ; life gradually becomes extinguished, and death is but the 

 last term of this series of degrees, the last shade of life. 



CCXXXIX. Of Death, Long, in fact, before the close of life, man 

 loses the power of reproduction ; and, in the course of the agony which 

 serves as a passage between life and death, the organs of sense first be- 

 come insensible to all sorts of impressions ; the eyes grow dim, the cor- 

 nea fades, the eye-lids close, the voice becomes extinct, the limbs and the 

 trunk motionless 5 yet the circulation and respiration continue to be car- 

 ried on, but at least cease, first in the vessels farthest from the heart, and 

 then gradually in the vessels nearest that organ. Respiration, gradually 

 slackened, being entirely suspended after a strong expiration*, the lungs 

 no longer transmit the blood\vhich the veins bring from every quarter 

 to the heart. This fluid stagnates in the right cavities of the heart, and 

 these die last, (ultimum moriens) and distended by the blood which col- 

 lects within them, they attain a capacity exceeding greatly that of the 

 left cavities, which are, to a certain degree, emptied. 



* Noii ergo in sola rigiditate causam senmin mortis opertet poncre ; nara ex defect' 1 , 

 irritabilitatis, plurimi in senibus musculi languent, mollesque pendent. 



Elementa Physiol. torn. VIII, 4to. lib. 30. 



f Does this last and powerful expiration, often attended by sighing, depend on the 

 spasmodic contraction of the muscles of expiration ; or rather does it not depend on the 

 re-action of the elastic pails which form the chest, a re-action which suddenly cease 

 tp be counterbalanced by the vital properties ?~.rfuthQr's Note, 



3K 



