Cases of Natural and Violent Death Note, in which a new System of 426 The means of Resuscitation applied by the Humane Societies in cases of Suspended Animation; and Reflections thereon. Zeal and Perseverance most important in the Resuscitative ProcessIllustrated in a curious Anecdote of the successful exertions of the EMPEROR ALEXANDER in recovering a Drowned person. 476 344-426 443-480 A Dissertation, ON THE DISORDER OF DEATH. THE powers of Animal Life and the nature of the Vital Principle, afford a subject of enquiry the most interesting and important, which can excite the feelings or engage the faculties of man. The being, which we are so anxious to preserve and so unwilling to resign, is the first object of our hopes and of our fears; and we are prompted by the most ardent spirit of curiosity to investigate those subtle operations, by which the process of existence is performed, and by which the period of its duration may be prolonged. It has been acknowledged however, that after all our researches, the difficulties of this mysterious question still remain to be unfolded, and that we have learned little more than to perceive the extent of our ignorance, and the vanity of our science. The Great secret of Nature still eludes our search, and mocks at our speculations. The understanding becomes lost and bewildered, when it endeavours to reflect on the mechanism of its own powers and the source of its own energies. We are amazed and confounded, when we contemplate the union of thought, or even of motion and sensation, with organized matter in the functions of animal life; and our amazement ought still perhaps to be increased, when we meditate on that condition of the frame, in which this union appears at once to be dissolved, and the action of the vital principle is visible no more. As we proceed forward in our reflections on this subject, we shall find ourselves more deeply involved in doubts, and alarmed with difficulties. We shall not only perceive how little has been performed to advance the progress of science, but we shall be enabled likewise to understand how vague and imperfect are those conceptions, on which our reasoning has been formed, and by which our practice has has been regulated. We shall soon discover, that the very terms Life and Death, which have been adopted to express these different affections of the animal system, afford us in a variety of cases no precise or determinate ideas, and that from this source have arisen the most fatal delusions, which are to be found in the eventful records of human imbecility. It might perhaps be imagined, that we had acquired the most clear and distinct notions on these conditions of the frame, so remote, as it should seem, from each other, and so familiar to our perpetual experience; yet the first efforts of our reflection will be sufficient to abate our confidence on a subject so intricate and obscure. The definitions or conceptions, which the ignorant might form on the essential properties of Life, and the certain indications of Death, would be rejected probably with contempt, by the adepts in medicine; and the philosopher perhaps might be inclined to suspect, that the artist had but little advanced beyond the most ordinary and superficial observer, either in the perfection of his theory, or the prudence of his practice. On that, which was plain and palpable, they B 2 would |