Physiological researches on life and death / by Xavier Bichat ; translated from the French, by F. Gold.

  • Xavier Bichat
Date:
[1815]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physiological researches on life and death / by Xavier Bichat ; translated from the French, by F. Gold. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    276/300 (page 264)
    flows out quite red ; at the end of them, is sometimes almost black. The easy or embarrassed state of the respiration of the patient, is the occasion of these va- rieties. This ] have frequently remarked, when at- tending Dessault, and was often struck with the ap- pearance, before I knew the cause of it. # I have never found any relation w hatever, between the obscure colour of the blood, and the compression exercised above the artery, as some have asserted to take place. There is, indeed, a connection between the colour and the impetuosity of the jet, but the rea” son of this is ev ident to any one who has read the fore- going pages. To return to the point of doctrine on which we are at present occupied, I am persuaded from the conside- rations and experiments which are adduced in the course of this chapter, that the manner in which the heart ceases to act, when the cerebral functions are suspended, can no longer admit of a doubt, and that we may resolve the question proposed, in affirming that under such circumstances, the death of the pay is occasioned through the medium of that of the Jungs. There is this difference, then, between the death of the heart, in consequence of that of the brain, and the death of the brain in consequence of that of the heart, that the one is indirect, the other direct, as we have already seen. If some men, as Stahl asserts, have really been able to suspend the movements of the heart, the fact is not a proof of the influence of the mind overthe muscles of the organic life, but of its pewer over the mechanical, and consequently, the che- mical phenomena of respiration. In red and cold blooded animals, the death of the heart does not succeed the death ef the brain so quickly