An inquiry into the nature of sleep and death with a view to ascertain the more immediate causes of death, and the better regulation of the means of obviating them : being the concluding part of the author's experimental inquiry into the laws of vital functions / by A. P. W. Philip, M.D.

  • Philip, Alexander Philip Wilson, 1770-1847.
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the nature of sleep and death with a view to ascertain the more immediate causes of death, and the better regulation of the means of obviating them : being the concluding part of the author's experimental inquiry into the laws of vital functions / by A. P. W. Philip, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    system, properly so called, might be inferred from a variety of facts generally known, the temperature either of a part or of the whole body being lessened by any cause that impairs the action of particular nerves in the former instance, or of the whole nervous system in the latter. But this position is established in a more conclusive manner by the experiments of Mr. Brodie, detailed in the Philosophical Transac- tions for 1812 and 1814, in which the temperature was uniformly lessened by impairing the powers of the nervous system ; and in a different way, by experiments detailed in my Inquiry into the Laws of the Vital Functions, (Part II. Chap. VII. Sect. 2. and Chap. 8.) in which the temperature was uniformly lessened by impairing the extent of the nervous system by destroying considerable portions of the spinal marrow. The question to be determined then is, is the nervous system capable of all these functions after the sensorial power is withdrawn ? At the moment of what we call death, the sensorial functions cease, the animal no longer feels or wills. Whether the nervous functions, properly so called, still continue, can only be determined by experiment.