The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1895-08-28
THE NATURE OF DEATH.
The Liza That Endures IL Life Only In tho
Abstract.

4 AD6troCC
The nature of death we conceive
from our knowledge of it in man and
the higher animals, and conceive it err.
rOneously. For with the higher ami
mails, what we call death is a sudden
cessation of the gross functions Of the
body. There is a moment at which the
watchers say, This that was alive, is
now dead" Death has come by one
of the atric mortis, the three gates;
by the failure of the heart, of the
lungs, or the brain, the mechanism has
broken down, and stops suddenly and
visibly. Even in old age, when there
has been a slow degenera ton of all the
organs, the final arrest of their func.
lions comes sharply, at a particular
moment But this suddenness is no
| part of the real nature of the event.
The point of time varies with the skill
! Of the surgeon and with the appliances
! at his disposal. 1t is not until long
| after the moment at which it seems to
us that the spirit has left the body that
the tissues are dead. For hours after
ward the skin remains alive, the hairs
grow, the sweat glands are in repulsive
activity, while the muscles respond to
electrical stimulation by nightmare
contortions The body of man is
highly integrated structure; each or
gan has a communion so intimate with
every other that failure of any part is
reflected upon the whole, and the
breakdown of heart, or lungs, or
brain brings slow but irremediable dis
aster upon the whole body. In this
we have to distinguish two things:
What we call death-the sudden arrest
that is an accident of the complex har.
mony of the body, as when a steamship
is stopped in mid-ocean by the rupture
of a valve-and the actual death of the
living protoplasm of the cells and
tissues.
In the descending scale of animal
life the relations between the organs
are less and less intimate, and mislead-
ing suddenness of the arrest of their
machinery fades away. The heart of
q turtle, from which the brain has
been removed, will continue to beat
for days
A worm or a star-fsh may be cut in
sometimes even reproducing the
whole. Who shall name the point OF
death of an oyster, or of a sea-
anemone? No stoppage of single
organ causes sudden death and con-
spicuous change in the whole, when
protoplasmic death of part occurs,
either the part is sloughed away and
replaced, or the ripples of destructive
change spread slowly from cell to cell,
each unaffected part remaining active
to the last. In the simplest animals of
all, organisms that consist of single
cell, death may be seen at its lowest
terms. There is no composite multi
cellular body, no bodily mechanism to
break down. no possibility of the fail
ure of one set of cells gradually creep
ing upon Others Each organism is
alive or dead as its protoplasm is alive
or dead.
Here. in their simplest forms, are
life and death; and here, asking il
death be inherent in living matter, we
find surprising answer. Violence of
heat and cold. mechanical forces and
the assaults of chemical affinites may
destroy these single particles of life;
but if not overthrown bv rude acci-
dent, and if provided with food and
drink. their potaplash lives forever.
Each particle feeds until, outgrowing
a convenient size. IL cleaves asunder
and the one life becomes two lives
So far as reason and observation can
inform US, the living particles in the
ponds and seas OF today have de-
scended in direct continuity of liv-
ing material from the FIRST dawn OF |
life. No other solution is open, save |
the possibility of q spontaneous gen
Grafton of living matter so continual |
and so common that il could not have |
eluded the search of science This Is !
that Immortality OF the protozoa"
limited at By Lancaster in England, |
blazoned into fame oy Weismsnu
Whether or not the protoplasm of the /
tissues Of higher organisms be poten-
TALLY immortal can be only matter /
of Inference The reproductive cells I
indeed. form a living chain. binding /
the animals and plants of the present /
with the animals and plants OF the re-
hottest past This reproductive pro-
toplasm is immortal in precisely the
same sense as the protoplasm of single
cells is immortal, and there seems no
reason 10 believe with Weismann that
the protoplasm of the other tissues has
acquired mortality. and is OF differ
eut kind Ii dies, bu; only because j,
is part Of a complex structure
The machinery Of the body is not
->-uiatAd "a last forsvaxs On shs osbex