THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 305 
the end of the eighteenth century did death in action be- 
come the subject of investigation by Bichat. 
Bichat is the greatest of the physiological historians of 
death. The famous work he has left on this subject, his 
“Physiological Researches upon Life and Death,” is as 
noteworthy for the grandeur of its general ideas, and its 
beauty of style, as for its precision of facts and nicety of 
experiment. To this day it remains the richest mine of re- 
corded truths as to the physiology of death. Having de- 
termined the fact that life is seriously endangered only by 
alterations in one of the three essential organs, the brain, 
the heart, and the lungs, a group forming the vital tripod, 
Bichat examines how the death of one of these three or- 
gans assures that of the others, and in succession the 
gradual stoppage of all the functions. In our day, the ad- 
vance of experimental physiology in the path so success- 
fully traversed by Bichat, has brought to light in their mi- 
nutest details the various mechanical processes of death, | 
and, what is of far greater consequence, has disclosed an 
entire order of activities heretofore only suspected to be at 
work in the corpse. The theory of death has been built 
up by slow degrees along with that of life, and several 
practical questions that had remained in a state of uncer- 
tainty, such as that of the signs of real death, have re- 
ceived the most decisive answer in the course of these re- 
searches. 
I, 
Bichat pointed out that the complete life of animals is 
made up of two orders of phenomena, those of circulation 
and nutrition, and those that fix the relations of the living 
being with its environment. He distinguishes organic life 
from animal life, properly so calied. Vegetables have only 
the former; animals possess both, intimately blended. 
Now, on the occurrence of death, these two sorts of life do 
not disappear a fae and the same moment. It is the ani- 
