The excretions also appear to be affected much in the same way. The bladder of asphyxiated persons has been observed by Portal, to be very much distended. Such distension, no doubt is occasioned by the urine already secreted before the accident which was the cause of their deaths. In general, the asphyxiæ which are occasioned by the circulation of the black blood unmixed with any deleterious substance, are not accompanied with those spasms, which in so many other sorts of death, are so frequent. These spasms, which evacuate the organs of their fluids, should be carefully distinguished from the simple relaxations of the sphincters, by which analogous effects are produced.[98] In asphyxia, all is debility, in asphyxia, we never see that augmentation of life, that development of power, which so frequently mark the latter movements of the dying.
Hence also perhaps, the great flexibility of the members of asphyxiated persons. The stiffness of the muscles appears to depend in many cases, on the circumstance of death having come on precisely at the moment of their contractions. The fibres remain approximated, and coherent among themselves;[99] in asphyxia, on the contrary, as there exists an universal relaxation and want of action in the parts, they remain so after death, and yield to whatever impulse may be communicated to them.
I confess, however, that this explanation is subject to a difficulty which I cannot solve. Persons asphyxiated by mephetic vapours, perish nearly in the same way as those who are drowned; if the cause of their death be different, its effects are the same, as may be seen by opening the carotid of two dogs at the same time, that into the lungs of the one are injected the vapours of charcoal, and into those of the other, a certain quantity of water, which water, as in the drowned, is soon reduced into a state of foam.
Notwithstanding this similitude of the last phenomena of life in the two cases, the members in the first remain for a certain time warm and supple, while those in the second, especially if the body be plunged into water during the experiment, become very suddenly stiff and frozen. Let us return, however, to our subject. We may conclude from the various facts and considerations related in this chapter, 1st, That when the chemical functions of the lungs are suspended, the functions of all the other organs are suspended also, from the presence of black blood within their substance. 2dly, That the death of the organs in general, coincides with that of the brain, and the heart, but is not immediately derived from them. 3dly, That if it were possible for the brain and heart to receive an influx of arterial blood, while the others were dying, from that of the venous blood, they would doubtless continue to exert their accustomed actions. 4thly, That, in a word, asphyxia is a general phenomenon, developed at the same time in all the organs, but especially in one of them.
From this manner of regarding the influence of the black blood upon the different parts of the body, it appears that death is very soon the result of its circulation in the arteries. Nevertheless, certain organic defects have sometimes prolonged after birth, the mixture of the two sorts of blood, a mixture which is known to be made in the fœtus. Such was the malconformation mentioned by Sandeford, in a child, the aorta of which arose by a branch from each of the ventricles. Such also appears, at first sight, to be the opening of the foramen ovale in the adult.
We shall remark, however, that the existence of this foramen, does not suppose the passage of the black blood into the red-blooded auricle, as is generally believed. For the two semi-lunar valves, between which it is situated when met with after birth, are necessarily applied to each other by the pressure which the blood contained in the auricles, exercises upon them, when these cavities are simultaneously contracted. The foramen must be at such time shut, and its obliteration much more exact, than that of the opening of the ventricles, by the mitral and tricuspid valves, or that of the aorta and the pulmonary artery, by the sigmoid valves. With all this, the foramen ovale is actually very often found open in the subject, and when not so, nothing is easier than to destroy the species of adhesion which is contracted by the two valves which close it. This may be done with the handle of a scalpel, without any solution of continuity, the parts appear to be unglued.
The oval hole when in this way artificially made, presents the same disposition, with that which is sometimes exemplified in the carcase. Now if this disposition be examined, it will be seen that when the auricles contract, the blood must make an obstacle to itself, and that it cannot pass from one into the other of these cavities. It is an easy thing to be convinced of the mechanism of which I speak, by means of two injections of a different colour, made at the same time from both sides of the heart, from the vena cava, and the pulmonary veins.
From what we have said of the influence, which is exercised by the movement and the different principles of the blood, it is evident that the death of the white organs must be different from that of the red ones. Asphyxia can hardly reach them, but of the manner in which they die I confess that I know but little.