THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 
OF old, the spoils of death fell to the anatomist’s share, 
while the physiologist took for his part the phenomena of 
life. Now we submit the corpse to the same experiments 
as the living organism, and pry into the relics of death for 
the secrets of life. Instead of seeing in the lifeless body 
mere forms ready to dissolve and vanish, we detect in it 
forces and persisting activities full of deep instructiveness 
in their mode of working. As theologians and moralists 
exhort us to study the spectre of death face to face at 
times, and strengthen our souls by courageous meditation 
on our last hour, so medicine regards it as essential to 
direct our attention toward all the details of that mournful 
drama, and thus to lead us, through gloom and shadows, to 
a clearer knowledge of life. But it is only with respect to 
medicine in the most modern days that this is true. 
Leibnitz, who held profound and admirable theories of 
life, had one of death also, which he has unfolded in a fa- 
mous letter to Arnauld. He believes that generation is 
only the development and evolution of an animal already 
existing in form, and that corruption or death is only the 
reénvelopment or involution of the same animal, which 
does not cease to subsist and continue living. The sum of 
vital energies, consubstantial with monads, does not vary 
in the world; generation and death are but changes in the 
order and adjustment of the principles of vitality, simple 
