All the caloric that is combined with the red blood is not disengaged whilst this fluid is passing through the general capillary system; there remains some of it still combined with the black blood. Hence why in the first moments of asphyxia, before death has taken place, though in consequence of the interruption of respiration, all the blood that comes through the arteries to the capillaries is black, the heat continues to be generated for some time. When the contact of the black blood has even interrupted all the great functions, those of the brain, of the muscles, the heart, the lungs, &c. it appears that the black blood then undergoes for some time, a kind of oscillation in the capillary system, by which it disengages a little caloric. Hence, why those who have died of asphyxia produced by charcoal, or hanging, animals killed in vacuo, apoplectics, &c. preserve their heat a long time after death, as all physicians have observed. This phenomenon is not however peculiar to the case of which we are treating. In opening dead bodies at the Hotel Dieu, I have observed that the time in which they lost their animal heat was very variable; that a body continues warm a greater or less time, especially among those who have died suddenly of an acute affection, in the paroxysm of an ataxic fever, for example, or by a fall, for those who die of a chronic disease, lose almost immediately their caloric. The difference in the first is often three, four, or even six hours. This phenomenon arises from the fact, that whenever death is sudden it interrupts only the great functions; the tonic action of the parts continues for a greater or less time after. Now this action disengages a little caloric from the blood that is in the general system. Thus in violent deaths, absorption continues some time after death; thus the muscles still contract; thus perhaps the glands, take up for some hours, from the blood that remains in the capillary system, the materials proper for their secretion. This inequality in the heat of dead bodies can only arise from the cause I have named; for when the disengagement of caloric has ceased in the body, that which remains in it becomes in equilibrium with that of the external air, according to the general laws of this equilibrium. Now these laws being uniform, their effect would be the same in every case. Hence then the phenomena related above, are evidently incompatible with any other theory than that which supposes the caloric to be disengaged in the general capillary system.