If there be any thing necessary to confirm what has been said concerning the gradual cessation of life, we might find it in the uncertainty of the signs of death. By consulting the writers on this subject, and particularly Winslow and Bruhier, we shall be convinced, that between life and death the shade is often so undistinguishable that all the powers of medical art are insufficient to determine upon it. According to them, “the colour of the face, the warmth of the body, the suppleness of the joints, are but equivocal signs of life; and that the paleness of the complexion, the coldness of the body, the stiffness of the extremities, the cessation of all motion, and the total insensibility of the parts, are signs to the full as equivocal of death.” It is also the same with regard to the cessation of the pulse, and of respiration, which are sometimes so effectually kept under, that it is impossible to obtain the smallest perception of either. By carrying a mirror, or candle, to the mouth of a person supposed to be dead, people expect to find whether he breathes or not; but in this experiment there is little certainty; the mirror is often sullied after death has taken place, and remains unclouded while the person is still alive. Neither do burning nor scarifying, noises in the ears, nor pungent spirits applied to the nostrils, give indubitable proofs of the discontinuance of life; many are the instances of persons who have undergone all such trials without shewing any signs of life, and yet, to the astonishment of the spectators, recovered afterwards, without the smallest assistance.
Nothing can be more evident than that life, in some cases, has a near resemblance to death, and therefore that we ought to be extremely cautious of renouncing, and committing too hastily to the grave, the bodies of our fellow-creatures. Neither ten, twenty, nor twenty-four hours are sufficient to distinguish real from apparent death; and there are instances of persons who have been alive in the grave at the end of the second, and even the third day. Why suffer to be interred with precipitation those persons whose lives we ardently wished to prolong? Why, though all men are equally interested in the abolition of it, does the practice still subsist? On the authority of the most able physicians, it incontestably appears, “that the body, though living, is sometimes so far deprived of all vital function, as to have every external appearance of death; that, if in the space of three days, or seventy two hours, no sign of life appears, and on the contrary the body exhales a cadaverous smell, there is an infallible proof of actual death; and that then, though on no account till then, the interment can with safety take place.”
Hereafter we shall have occasion to speak of the usages of different nations with respect to obsequies, interments, and embalments. The greatest part, even of the most savage people, pay more attention than we to their deceased friends. What with us is nothing more than a ceremony, they consider as an essential duty. Far superior is the respect which they pay to their dead: they clothe them, they speak to them, they recite their exploits, they extol their virtues; while we, who pique ourselves on our sensibility, with hardly an appearance of humanity, forsake and fly from them, we neither desire to see, nor have courage nor inclination to speak to them, and even avoid every place which may recall their idea to our minds. Than savages themselves, then, do we, in this respect, discover either more indifference or more weakness.
Having thus given a history of life, and of death, as they relate to the individual, let us now consider them both, as they affect the whole species. Man dies at every age; and though in general the duration of his life is longer than that of most animals, yet it is more uncertain and more variable.
Of late years attempts have been made to ascertain the degrees of such variations, and to establish, by different observations, some certainty as to the mortality of men at different ages. Were such observations sufficiently exact and numerous they would be admirably calculated to give a knowledge of the number of people, their increase, the consumption of provisions, and of a number of other important objects. Many writers of distinguished abilities, and, among others, Halley and Simpson, have given tables of the mortality of the human species; but as their labours have been confined to an examination of the bills of mortality in a few parishes of London, and other large cities, their researches, however accurate, seem, in my opinion, to give a very imperfect idea of the mortality of mankind in general.
In order to give a complete table of this nature it is necessary to scrutinise not only the parish-registers of such towns as London and Paris, where there is a perpetual ingress of strangers and egress of natives, but also those of different country places; that, by comparing the deaths which happen in the one with the deaths which happen in the other, a general conclusion may be formed. M. Dupré, of St. Maur, a member of the French academy, executed this project upon twelve different parishes in the country of France, and, three in Paris. Having obtained his permission to publish the tables he has drawn up on this occasion, I do it with the greater pleasure, as they are the only ones from which the probabilities of human life in general can with any certainty be established.
YEARS OF LIFE.
| PARISHES. | deaths. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| Clemont | 1391 | 578 | 73 | 36 | 29 |
| Brinon | 1141 | 441 | 75 | 31 | 27 |
| Jouy | 588 | 231 | 43 | 11 | 13 |
| Lestiou | 223 | 89 | 16 | 9 | 7 |
| Vandeuvre | 672 | 156 | 58 | 18 | 19 |
| St. Agil | 954 | 359 | 64 | 30 | 21 |
| Thury | 262 | 103 | 31 | 8 | 4 |
| St. Amant | 748 | 170 | 61 | 24 | 11 |
| Montigny | 833 | 346 | 57 | 19 | 25 |
| Vieleneuve | 131 | 14 | 3 | 5 | 1 |
| Goussainville | 1615 | 565 | 184 | 63 | 38 |
| Ivry | 2247 | 686 | 298 | 96 | 61 |
| Total Deaths | 10805 | ||||
Division of 10805 deaths into the years they happened | } | 3738 | 963 | 350 | 256 |
Deaths before the end of the 1st, 2d, 3d, &c. years. | } | 3738 | 4701 | 5051 | 5307 |
Number of persons entered into their 1st, 2d, 3d, &c. years. | } | 10805 | 7067 | 6104 | 5754 |
| St. Andre, Paris, | 1728 | 201 | 122 | 94 | 82 |
| St. Hippolytus, | 2516 | 754 | 361 | 127 | 64 |
| St. Nicolas, | 8945 | 1761 | 932 | 414 | 298 |
| Total Deaths | 13189 | ||||
Division of the 13189 deaths into the years they happened.> | } | 2716 | 1415 | 635 | 444 |
Deaths before the end of the 1st, 2d, 3d, &c. years. | } | 2716 | 4131 | 4766 | 5210 |
Number of persons who entered into the 1st, 2d, &c. years. | } | 13189 | 10473 | 9058 | 8423 |
Division of the 23994 deaths in the 3 parishes of Paris and the 12 villages. | } | 6454 | 2378 | 985 | 700 |
Deaths before the end of the 1st, 2d, years, &c. out of the 23994 | } | 6454 | 8832 | 9817 | 10517 |
Number of persons entered into their 1st and 2d years, &c. | } | 23994 | 17540 | 15162 | 14177 |