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THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



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follows that when such actions are arrested irretrievably 

 the organism as an individual whole must die^ although 

 its separate parts and anatomical elements may and 

 do perish much more slowly, after different intervals. 

 These perish simply by default — because the conditions 

 suitable for the continuance of their life are no longer 

 forthcoming; and not because they themselves as vital 

 units had received any damage at the time that the 

 organism as a whole ceased to live — when the action of 

 the vital machine was stopped. Every anatomical ele- 

 ment of even the highest animal may fairly be said to 

 possess Life and a specific mode of action, each after its 

 own kind ; only, the vital manifestations of the whole of 

 these units are subordinated to the Life — and, in health, 

 work towards the well-being — of the higher organism of 

 which they form part. 

 a whole, results from the stoppage of its machinery; 

 but the death of its component parts subsequently 

 follows as a consequence of the cessation of those 

 more general actions — under whose influence they 

 were produced, and without whose existence thej can 

 no longer live, 

 punctured and the heart has ceased to beat, there is 

 a permanent stoppage of this function, without which 

 Life, in such a being as a mammalian vertebrate, 

 is impossible. It consequently dies. If the blood no 

 longer circulates, the anatomical elements, which are 

 absolutely dependent upon this fluid for their pabulum, 

 must also, after a time, necessarily die. The individual 



The death of the Organism as 



If the medulla oblongata has been 



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