Physiological Researches on Life and Death

The greater number of Physicians, who have written upon the vital properties, have begun by researches on their principle, have endeavoured to descend from the knowledge of the...

We have already said, that the functions of the lungs are of two kinds, mechanical and chemical. Now the activity of this organ ceases sometimes by the former, and sometimes by...

I have just shewn in what way the interruption of the chemical phenomena which take place in the lungs, annihilates the functions of the heart and brain. It remains me to shew,...

If there be any circumstance, which establishes a real line of demarcation between the two lives, this circumstance undoubtedly is the mode and epoch of their origin. The organi...

It is necessary to consider, under two relations, those acts, which little connected with the material organization of animals, are derived from this principle so little known i...

In recapitulating what has been said in the preceding chapters, with respect to the influence of the lungs over the heart, the brain, and all the organs, it is an easy matter to...

I shall evidently have determined what is the mode of this influence, should I be enabled to establish in what way the action of the heart is necessary to that of the brain; for...

We have just seen, that in asphyxia, the movements of the heart are paralyzed, because its fleshy fibres are penetrated with venous blood. This fact should indicate the same to...

Harmony is to the functions of the organs, what symmetry is to their conformation; it supposes a perfect equality of force and action, between their similar parts, just as symme...

In the preceding chapter we have shewn how the lungs remain inactive, when the brain ceases to act.--The same phenomenon, under the same circumstances, takes place also in the h...

When the brain dies, the animal life dies, for the functions of this life, either directly or indirectly, have their seat in the brain. It is manifest, that all the operations a...

As soon as the human brain ceases to act, the functions of the lungs are suddenly interrupted; this phenomenon, which is constantly observed in the red and warm-blooded animals,...

The definition of life is usually sought for in abstract considerations; it will be found, if I mistake not, in the following general expression:--Life consists in the sum of th...

We have just now seen, that the two lives commence at distant epochs; we have seen them developing themselves according to laws, which are exactly the reverse of each other. I s...

I shall divide this chapter, as the preceding one, into two sections. In the first I shall examine, how the death of the red-blooded heart, in the second how the death of the bl...

Whenever the heart ceases to act, general death is produced in the following manner:--1st. For want of excitement the cerebral actions are annihilated, and consequently an end i...

In the animal life every thing is modified by habit. The functions of this life, whether enfeebled or exhausted by it, according to the different periods of their activity, appe...

We have just now seen that the animal life, which is inactive in the fœtus, is developed after birth: we have also followed up the particular laws of its development. On the con...

The organs of the animal life are symmetrical, those of the organic life irregular in their conformation; in this circumstance consists the most essential of their differences....

One of the great distinguishing characters of the phenomena of the animal life in opposition to those of the organic life, has just been shewn. That, which I am about to examine...

From the consideration of what has been said in the preceding chapter, nothing can be more easy than to form an accurate idea of the manner in which the phenomena of general dea...

In the first part of this work, I have explained the two great divisions of life, together with the remarkable differences, which distinguish the animal existing without, from t...

The lungs are the seat of two very different sorts of phenomena. The first, which are entirely mechanical, are relative to the rise and fall of the ribs and diaphragm, to the di...