When the intermediate organ that receives the excitement is diseased, the contractility is uniformly altered. The same stimulus produces slow or rapid contractions, according as the affection raises or diminishes the sensibility of this intermediate organ. A slight inflammation of the exterior of the bladder produces a kind of incontinence of urine; that of the intestines occasions diarrhœa, &c. &c. On the contrary, old catarrhs of the bladder, the affections in which weakness of the mucous surface of this organ predominates, are the frequent causes of retention. 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.