264 



February 20, 1834. 



HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF SUSSEX, K.G., 

 President, in the Chair. 



The reading of Dr. Philip's paper was resumed and concluded. 



The object of the present paper, which the author intends as a 

 sequel to those he has lately presented to the Society, and which 

 have been published in the Philosophical Transactions, is to investi- 

 gate the operation of the different causes of death, and the mode in 

 which the several powers of the living system influence each other 

 during the period of their decline. In the more perfect animals, he 

 observes, there are three distinct classes of functions, namely, the sen- 

 sorial the nervous and the muscular, which have no direct depend- 

 ence on each other, although they are linked together by the con- 

 nexions of the organs in which they reside ; the consequence of which 

 is, that the cessation of any one class of functions is more or less im- 

 mediately followed by the destruction of the rest. What is commonly 

 called death consists in the extinction of the sensorial functions only; 

 for the nervous and muscular functions may still, for a time, survive - } 

 although, in consequence of the failure of respiration, which in the 

 more perfect animals the author considers as, in the strictest sense, 

 a function of volition, they also speedily terminate. Thus he distin- 

 guishes this sensorial death from what constitutes actual death, that 

 is, the cessation of all the functions, and which occurs at a later pe- 

 riod. As far as the sensorial powers are concerned, their decline and 

 cessation are exceedingly analogous to the approach and occurrence 

 of sleep ; the only difference being that the former is an irrevocable 

 failure of those powers, while the latter admits of their being resumed 

 with renovated vigour by the continued action of the vital powers. 



The modes in which the sensitive functions are extinguished, or in 

 other words the forms of death, are referred by the author to five dif- 

 ferent heads : the first and only natural mode is that from the simple 

 effect of old age, when all the powers of life are completely exhausted 

 by the continued operation of the agents which had excited them ; and 

 death is, in that case, only the last sleep. The vital functions are 

 here impaired, chiefly from the diminished frequency of respiration, 

 which is itself a consequence of the impaired sensibility ; so that there 

 is a diminution of the action, but not of the powers, of the vital or- 

 gans. If the decay of the vital powers be gradual, and nothing occurs 

 suddenly to accelerate it, they will necessarily cease at the time when 

 their excitement is the smallest, that is, during the state of sleep. 



In all other cases, death arises from causes which must be regarded 

 as adventitious, and consequently inducing a more or less violent 

 death. The first class of these causes comprises those arising from 

 the continued action of stimulants, more powerful than the ordinary 

 stimulants to which the system is subjected, and making their imme- 

 diate impression on the organs of the sensitive system. These may- 

 be considered as producing a diseased condition of the sensorium, 



