Elements of animal physiology, chiefly human : with hints on practical work, dissection, &c / by John Angell.

  • Angell, John.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of animal physiology, chiefly human : with hints on practical work, dissection, &c / by John Angell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    material ingested for the repair of the system, large quantities of oxygen gas shall he constantly ingested into the system. It has been estimated that 800 lbs. of oxygen gas, and consequently about five times that ■weight of atmo- spheric air are passed through the lungs of an ordinary working man in the course of one year. (See Organs of Respiration.) 28. When the body ceases to be supplied with oxygen, the brain, the heart, and the lungs cease to act, and death from asphyxia or suffocation ensues. 29. Death, Local, Molecular, and Somatic.—When the body of an animal performs its various functions it is said to live, or be in a state of life; when such a body entirely ceases to perform its various functions, it is said to be dead. Every animal is endowed at its birth with a con- stitution, in consequence of which it is, under favour- able, that is normal, circumstances, capable of passing through a systematic series of cycles of change at the termination of which it, no longer p>ossessing the power of continuing to develop the vital forces necessary to its further existence, ceases to live—or in other words, dies a natural, and probably painless death, from pure natural exhaustion of vitality. This constitutes death from old age. From mis- conduct, and breach of natural law, in most cases more or less unavoidable, because of ignorance of physio- logical law, or of the artificial necessities of modern civilization, probably not one in ten-thousand dies a natural death—that is, lives out the full period of his proper natural existence, but dies by accident (injury) or by disease. Death, however, does not occur simultaneously through every part of the body. The tissues of the man continue to live, and even to be nourished for a short time after the man himself is dead. Thus the hair may possibly continue to grow a shoi't time after death. The muscles also may be made to contract by electrical stimulus for a