[94] It is not possible to remove by this means a great portion of air contained in the lungs, for the last ramifications of the air-tubes being flexible, their parietes soon come in contact, and thus oppose the exit of the air contained in the bronchial cells.
[95] These observations have been made on the great mammalia, and there has not been remarked any difference of colour.
[96] The difference that is remarked in the results of this experiment, compared with that in which the venous blood is introduced by means of a syringe, arises probably from this, that in the first the blood that is forced into the artery has already begun to coagulate.
[97] The deficiency of cutaneous exhalation in the last moments of life may contribute a little perhaps to the preservation of animal heat; but we have shown that there are other more powerful causes for this phenomenon. This deficiency of exhalation united to the inaction of the secretory organs, in the very short period in which the black blood runs in the arteries is an altogether insufficient cause to explain the abundance of blood that is found in the vessels of those who have died of asphyxia.
[98] This is not an uniform fact, and it is even very common to find, in persons who have been hung, the bladder completely empty.
[99] The moment respiration ceases, and the source of heat is consequently cut off, it is not astonishing that an animal body should become cold quicker in water then in a much less dense fluid, like the air. It should also be remarked that the water, on account of the evaporation that takes place on its surface, has almost always a temperature below that of the surrounding air.
[CHAPTER IX.]
OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE DEATH OF THE LUNGS, OVER THE GENERAL DEATH OF THE BODY.
In recapitulating what has been said in the preceding chapters, with respect to the influence of the lungs over the heart, the brain, and all the organs, it is an easy matter to form an idea of the successive termination of the whole of the functions, when the phenomena of respiration are suspended either mechanically or chemically.
The following is the manner in which death supervenes, when the mechanical phenomena of the lungs are interrupted, either from the causes mentioned in the 5th chapter, or from similar ones, such as the rupture of the diaphragm, which I have twice had occasion to observe,[100] or from a fracture of a great number of the ribs, or the sternum.