PHYSICAL LIFE AFTER DEATH.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2134, 5 November 1875, Page 3

PHYSICAL LIFE AFTER DEATH.

Man is a physiological trinity. His life is threefold. At the base, and embracing the phenomena of circulation and nutrition, is the organic life, as Bichat terms it —the life which the animal shares with the plant. Resting on this is the animal life, as exhibited in the phenomena of the sensory nervous system; and intimately connected with the latter, as its highest development, is the mental life, characteristic of man. These three are one, but not inseparable. They are not always born together, nor do they always die together. Death is not a simple phenomena, nor one of instantaneous occurrence. When man dies normally, as of old age, he dies like a tree, in detail, beginning at the top. The series of slow and partial deaths which, with the old man spared by disease, result in the last end of all is eloquently described by Pappillon. "All the senses in succession are sealed. Sight bte«*mes i:i3imand-.ttnsteady,.andat last loses the picture of things. Hearing grows gradually insensible to sounds; touch is blunted into dulness; odours produce but "a week impression; only taste lingers but a little while. At the tame time that the organs of sensation waste and lose their excitability, the functions of the brain fade out little by > little. Imagination becomes unfixed, memory nearly fails, judgment wavers. Motions become slow and difficult on account of stiffness of the muscles; the Voice breaks, all the functions of outward " life lose their spring. Each of the bonds -■;attaching the old man to/existence parts ■by sloV degrees. Yet the internal life " persists; ' Nutrition still take* place, but rery soon the forces desert the most ..essential organs. .Digestion languishes; * 'the secretions dry up, capillery circulation is clogged, in their turn each of the large "Vessels is checked, and at last the heart's contractions cease./ This is the instant of death. The heart is the last thing to die." V V ■...■.',. •■ ." '■■■•■ ■ •- • ;! .-: This ; orderly -sequence and painless closing of life is, however, comparatively rare Sometimes the mind dies loug be'forethe animal life is seriously affected, as when death is preceded 1 by years of imbecility. Sometimes death seizes first, * upon the extremities; and creepai upward, the mental powers remaining intact to the last.... Again .. the mind way, flicker with " titoi wonted 'brilliancy/ after the animal'life has seemed to go but.. In all cases,, how* ever, the organic life: is the last to ,jie)d.. '. :,, .. .! ,;. ■ ■;.-.■■ . . ■•: -■■ ■■ .^.AVjtjree. .•;■;,does not'die instantaneously " when felledi-though-death' 'begins at that .moment; similarly life persists in the body • after the thread of animal ; life is severed. And as slips from a felled tree may be grafted upon a living trunk, and thus escape the death of the parent - :fitemV so may portions of a dead animal be transplanted to the living, and so have ; their'life perpetuated. , . . If death were; immediate throughout •the'entire organism, such a transference of members without, any .interruption of . c; theiir.."physiological: activity would be impossible..... , . . :-'!Thiis''the'vital-i!ipfe--of Flourens—the ; . point the spinal marrow which that * physiologist made the seat and centre of ; Titality?-rris effectually disposed of. It is c:,true that/anyl disturbance of that portion of the nerve is more fatal than a like disturbance of any other part of. the • organism; but that is -not because it ■ differs in bind from other portions of the nervous system. Life is not morecon- -' centrated there than elsewhere; that is ' simply the initial point of. the nerves which animate the lungs, and the breath .ceases,, and death quickly ensues when ~tneir office is interfered with. . . :. ' Unlike the remarkable small dog of the nursery rhyme, animals—even the highest of living creatures —do not die " all over" at once. Our bodies are composed of many more or less independent parts, each living its own life, while contributing to the life of the whole, and each dying by itself. The human tissues may not retain their individual vitality so long as those of the lower orders of life, still they are very slow pf dying. Ihe hair and the nails continued to grow, and even the complicated processes of absorption and ' digestion go on for hours after the life of the organism has apparently ceased. The throbbing of a frog's heart after its complete separation from the rest of the body is often described as a characteristic illustration of the persistent vitality of reptilian structures. But the human -heart will do the same, In the case of decapitated criminals, it has been observed that the uncovered heart, even when the stomach, the liver, and the intestines have been removed, will continue the pulsations •for an hour or more after the guillotine has done its fatal work. ODe day when Robin was operating on the body of a criminal an hour after his execution, an example of reflex action was observed as remarkable as any of the seemingly intelligent movements recorded of the limbs of decapitated grogs. • "The right arm," says Robin, "being placed obliquely extended at the side of the trunk with a hand about lOin. away from the hip, I scratched the skin of the -chest, at about the height of the nipple, with the point of a scalpel, over a space of nearly 4in. without making any pressure on the muscles lying, beneath.. We immediately Saw the great pectoral muscle, then the biceps, then the anterior and quickly contract. SfePrcsuifc was a movement of approach, of the whole arm toward the trunk with rotation in ward and a half flexion of thoforearia upon the arm, a true defensive movement which threw the hand forward toward the chest as far as the pit of the stomach." Such spontaneous exhibitions of life, by the dead are trifles, however, as Papillon observes, compared.with those which may be ex#ited by means of certain stimulants, particularly electricity. In evidence he cites the experiments of Aldini on two criminals beheaded at Bologna, and those of XTre, in Glasgow, on the body of a criminal tkat had remained an hour hanging on the gallows—the details of which are too horrible for repetition. Less horrible, but not less remarkable and instructive, was an experiment made by Brown Sequard on the head of a de--1^" capitated dog. Having beheaded, the taking pains to hiake the section the point afc which the vertebral enter their bony sheath, the to the arteries little pipes, W ronnected byVdbes, with-a reservoir of oxygenated floo^"At this stage the head failed' to respond to the action of elec- "' trieitv • but when a current of. blood was • forced 'into the arteries, irregular motions of the eves and the facial muscles began, succeeded by regular harmonious contracS* T as if prompted by the animals ■ w iU ' The injection of blood into the Cerebral arteries was kept up for a quarter

of an hourV during which the mimicry of life was continued. On stopping the injection the motions ceased, and the spasms of a second death ensued. The question was raised^whether such a temporary renewal of life:? coul<| bo! brought about'by, the same Inieans. in. a human subject. Brown-Sequard wias'confident that it could be done, evea"with the head of one decapitated by the guillotine, provided certain precautions were taken t© prevent the filling ofcthe arteriei with air. But when it was proposed to him to try the experiment on a condemned criminal, he declined, not wishing, he said, to witness the-agony of such a human fragment temporarily recalled to sensibility and Ufe. v f Enough has been given to, show that; life and death are not such simple;affairs ; aa; is popularly" supposed ; and' that- in another sense than the poet meant, it is: not all of life to live, nor all of death to die. , r

, We will close with a suggestion to, sensational novelists. Having " snarled up" the hero of the tale in a maze of circumstantial evidence, ifc- would make a; very stunning- denouement to: save him; at l%st, by means of a post mortem confessibn of the crime by a murderer executed for another crime—the confes-; sion to be: extorted through the combined agency of galvanisni and the transfusion of fresh:biood;!-r-Scientific American. ■