I would observe that the existence of this intermediate organ is a remarkable difference between the sensible organic contractility and the insensible, for this organ does not exist in this last, in which the same system receives the impression and reacts upon the body that has produced it; for example, in the glandular, serous, cutaneous systems, &c. the fluid which enters them for secretion or exhalation produces in them the sensation, which is instantly followed by the reaction. In the sensible contractility on the contrary, one system feels and another is moved. This kind of mobility is less removed from that of animal life, in which the organs of the senses and those of the motion being wholly different, are very distant from each other.
Sensible Organic Contractility considered in relation to its duration after Death.
This duration is longer than that of the animal contractility. When the spinal marrow is irritated, the external muscles remain immoveable, whilst the internal ones are still in activity. There have been so many examples related of this duration, Haller has multiplied experiments so much upon this point, that there is no occasion for me to give proofs here of a fact of which no one can any longer doubt. To this duration are owing the evacuations of fecal matter and urine which often take place an instant after death; the vomitings that are observed in some subjects, if not in as evident a manner as during life, at least sufficient to raise the aliments into the mouth of the dead body, which is often completely filled with them, as I have frequently seen.
It is necessary, in relation to this duration, as in relation to that of the animal contractility, to distinguish two species of death; 1st, those that take place suddenly; 2d, those which are the consequence of long disease.
In every sudden death, produced either by a violent lesion of the brain, as in apoplexy, concussion, compression, effusion, &c. or by an affection of the heart, as in syncope, a wound, or a ruptured aneurism; or by a cessation of the action of the lungs, as in asphyxia from deleterious gases, a vacuum, submersion, &c. the duration of contractility is very evident; general death comes on first, then the organs die partially; each vital force is afterwards successively extinguished.
In every kind of death slowly produced, in all those especially which are preceded by a disease of weakness, it is the partial death of each organ that first takes place; each vital force is weakened and extinguished, gradually, before the cessation of them as a whole, which constitutes general death, comes on; when this death takes place, none of the lives peculiar to each organ remains, whilst most of these lives continue for a longer or shorter time after sudden death.
We cannot make these experiments upon dead bodies which we rarely have in the hospitals till fifteen hours or more after death; but by killing dogs by hunger, which, when long continued, becomes a real disease that lasts in these animals eight, ten and even twelve days, I have seen the contractility entirely extinguished at the moment of death. Dogs have been often brought to me affected with different diseases, especially three years since when there was a kind of epidemic among these animals; now by opening them at the instant of death, by killing them even some time before and thus producing a sudden death wholly different from that which happens in the sound state in which all the parts are uninjured in their functions and consequently in their vital forces, I have always seen a constant absence of contractility, or at least so greatly weakened that it appeared to be nothing.
Many physiologists have spoken of a general convulsion which comes on in the organic muscles at the instant of death, of a rising of the heart, the stomach, the intestines, &c. This excess of action is sometimes real in sudden deaths, in those especially that we produce for our experiments; it is very rare in deaths preceded by a long disease in which the patient is extinguished, as it were, insensibly, and passes gradually from life to death. It is a fault common to almost all authors, to generalize too much the facts observed under certain circumstances. Many false consequences are the results of it.
Sympathies.
No organ receives more easily the influence of others, than the organic muscles; all however are not equally susceptible of it. The heart occupies the first rank in this respect; then comes the stomach, then the intestines, and finally the bladder. It is in this order that we shall now examine this influence.