Physiological Researches on Life and DeathBichat, Xavier
Science
Physiological Researches on Life and Death
Bichat, Xavier
Death (Biology); Life (Biology)
In the glandular system also we see the crypts, or mucous follicles
disseminated in a disorderly manner in every part; the pancreas,
the liver, the salivary glands themselves, though at first sight
more symmetrical, are not exactly submitted to the median line;
added to this, the kidneys differ from each other in their
situation, in the length and size of their artery and vein, and in
their frequent varieties more especially.[7]
From considerations so numerous we are led to a result exactly the
reverse of the preceding one; namely, that the especial attribute
of the organs of the interior life is irregularity of exterior form.
III. _Consequences resulting from the difference of exterior form
in the organs of the two lives._
It follows from the preceding description, that the animal life is
as it were double; that its phenomena performed as they are at the
same time on the two sides of the body, compose a system in each of
them independent of the opposite system; that there is a life to
the right, a life to the left; that the one may exist, the other
ceasing to do so, and that they are doubtless intended reciprocally
to supply the place of each other.
The latter circumstance we may frequently observe in those morbid
affections so common, where the animal sensibility and mobility
are enfeebled, or annihilated on one side of the body, and capable
of no affection whatever; where the man on one side is little more
than the vegetable, while on the other he preserves his claim to
the animal character. Undoubtedly those partial palsies, in which
the median line, is the limit where the faculties of sensation and
motion finish, and the origin from whence they begin can never be
remarked so invariably in animals, which, like the oyster, have an
irregular exterior.
On the contrary the organic life is a single system, in which
every thing is connected and concatenated; where the functions on
one side cannot be interrupted, and those on the other subsist. A
diseased liver influences the state of the stomach; if the colon on
one side cease to act, that upon the other side cannot continue in
action: the same attack, which arrests the circulation in the right
side of the heart, will annihilate it also in the left side of the
heart. Hence it follows, the internal organs on one side being
supposed to suspend their functions, that those on the other must
remain inactive, and death ensue.
This assertion, however, is a general one; it is only applicable
to the sum of the organic life, and not to its isolated phenomena.
Some of them in fact are double, and their place may be
supplied--the kidneys and lungs are of this description.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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