From the frequency of deaths beginning with an embarrassment of the lungs, may be conceived also the reason, why this organ is so frequently gorged with blood in the carcase in general, the longer the agony, the heavier and fuller are the lungs. When such fulness is found, together with black blood in the red-blooded system, whatever the disease may have been, it may be pronounced that death has begun in the lungs. In fact the concatenation of the phenomena of death is from one of the three organs, from the lungs, brain, or heart, to all the others. Now when death begins in the heart, the pulmonary vessels are generally empty, and there is red blood in the aortic system. On the other hand, if death has begun in the brain, there is then indeed a certain quantity of blood in the arteries, but the lungs are empty, unless, when gorged with blood, by some antecedent affection. FOOTNOTES: [100] When the diaphragm is ruptured, a sudden cessation of the functions is not always the result of this accident. Patients have been known to survive many days, and the cause of death has only been ascertained by examining the body. The intercostal muscles are, in this case, the sole agents of respiration, which becomes nearly analogous to that of birds or to that of animals with red and cold blood, who are destitute of the septum between the thorax and abdomen.[101] Lieutaud cites various ruptures of the diaphragm, produced by other causes than external injuries. Diemerbroech has seen this muscle wanting in an infant who still lived to the age of seven years.