Physiological Researches on Life and DeathBichat, Xavier
Science
Physiological Researches on Life and Death
Bichat, Xavier
Death (Biology); Life (Biology)
The effects indeed of the passions are similar to those diseases
of the internal organs, which by sympathy are the causes of atony,
palsy, and spasm.
But perhaps the inward organs act upon the voluntary muscles, not
by means of the immediate excitement of the brain, but by direct
nervous communication. Of what importance to us is the manner? We
are not at present occupied on the so much agitated question of the
manner of sympathetic communication.
The essential thing is the fact itself. Now in this fact, there
are two things evident; the affection of an internal organ by the
passions, and secondly a motion produced in consequence of such
affection in muscles, on which this organ in the common series of
the phenomena of the two lives has no kind of influence. This is
surely a sympathy, for between it, and those with which convulsion,
or spasm of the face present us, when occasioned by any lesion of
the phrenic centre, or the stomach, the difference is only in the
cause, which affects the internal organ.
Any irritation of the uvula, or the pharynx convulsively agitates
the diaphragm. The too frequently repeated use of fermented liquors
occasions a general trembling of the body. But that which happens
in one mode of gastric affection, may happen in another. What
matters it, whether the stomach or liver be irritated by passion or
by some material cause? It is from the affection, and not from the
cause of the affection that results the sympathy.
Such in general is the manner in which the passions withdraw
from the empire of the will, those motions which by nature are
voluntary. Such is the manner in which they appropriate to
themselves, if I may so express myself, the phenomena of the animal
life, though they possess their seat essentially in the organic
life.
When very strong, the very lively affection of the internal organs
produces so impetuously the sympathetic motions of the muscles,
that the action of the brain is absolutely null upon them; but the
first impression past, the ordinary mode of locomotion returns.
A man is informed by letter and in presence of company, of a piece
of news, which it is his interest to conceal. All on a sudden
his brows become contracted, he grows pale, and his features are
moulded according to the nature of the passion, which has been
excited. These are sympathetic phenomena produced by the abdominal
viscera which have been affected by the passions, and which in
consequence belong to the organic life. But in a short time the man
is capable of putting a constraint upon himself, his countenance
clears up, his colour returns. Meanwhile the interior sentiment
continues to subsist however, but the voluntary have overpowered
the sympathetic motions, the action of the brain has surmounted
that of the stomach or the liver; the animal life of the man has
resumed its empire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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