Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/287

Rh ways that they require; but, just as each lives on its own account, so on its account each dies. And the proof that this is so is found in the fact that certain parts taken from a dead body can be transferred to a living one without suffering any interruption in their physiological activity, and in the fact that many organs which seem dead can be excited anew, awakened out of their torpor, and animated to extremely remarkable vital manifestations. This subject we now proceed to consider.

Death seems to be absolute from the instant that the pulsations of the heart are stopped without renewal, because, the circulation of the blood no longer proceeding, the nutrition of the organs becomes impossible, and nutrition is demanded for the maintenance of physiological harmony; but, as we have said above, there are a thousand little springs in the organism which keep up a certain degree of activity after the great main-spring has ceased to act. There is an infinite number of partial energies that outlive the destruction of the principal energy, and withdraw only by slow degrees. In cases of sudden death especially the tissues keep their peculiar vitality a very long time. In the first place, the heat declines only quite slowly, and the more so in proportion as death has been quick. For several hours after death the hair of the head and body, and the nails, continue to grow, nor does absorption either stop at once. Even digestion, too, keeps on. The experiment performed by Spallanzani to test this is very curious. He conceived the idea of making a crow eat a certain quantity of food, and killing it immediately after the meal. Then he put it in a place kept at the same temperature as that of a live bird, and opened it six hours later. The food was thoroughly digested.

Besides these general manifestations, the dead body is capable, during some continued time, of different kinds of activity. It is not easy to study these on the bodies of persons dying of sickness, because they are not permitted to be made the subject of anatomical examinations until twenty-four hours after death; but the bodies of beheaded criminals, which are given up to savants a few moments after their execution, can be of use in the investigation of what takes place immediately after the stopping of the living machine. If the heart is uncovered a few minutes after execution, pulsations are remarked which continue during an hour or longer, at the rate of forty to forty-five a minute, even after the removal of the liver, the stomach, and the intestines. For several hours the muscles retain their excitability, and undergo reflex contractions from the effect of pinching. M. Robin noted the following phenomenon in the case of a criminal an hour after his execution: "The right arm," to quote his description, "being placed obliquely extended at the side of the trunk, with the hand about ten inches away from the hip, I scratched the skin of the chest, at