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.