SIGNS OF APPHOACHING DEATH.
It would be tedious and altogether beyond the compass of this work to enumerate all the phenomena presented by the dying system, since they vary with the cause of death. We shall aim rather at describing and accounting for those which are common to most diseases and to natural decay; reserving to ourselves the liberty of noticing here and there some of the more striking varieties.
We might rationally expect that the first indications of dissolution would appear in the relative functions ; hebetude of the senses, in action of the muscles, vacancy of the intellect, extinction of the sentiments; and such is, in fact, the course of events in natural death. We have known the aged man remain feeling less, motionless, mindless, for many days be fore the cessation of the organic functions. This kind of death is sometimes imitated by apoplexy; but in the former the destruction of the animal life does not, as in the latter, arise from a lesion of the brain; its organs appear to undergo a gradual process of enfeeblement. In many febrile maladies there is the same priority of failure on the part of the cerebral functions, but they are generally preceded by more or less actual disease of the organ. But in the termi nation of some disorders the functions alluded to continue to the very last, almost surviving the circulation itself. It will be found however that the seat of such disorders was remote from the en cephal on, that it did not communicate with the latter by any special sympathy, and that the extinction of the cerebral functions was at tributable to the ariest of circulation in that organ, in common with many others. The cases in which the mind is said to continue clear and vigorous amid the ruin of the body, will be found to agree in the fact that the organ is correspondently unimpaired; they are for the most part chronic diseases of the thorax, abdomen, pelvis, and extremities. Certain affections even of the cerebro-spinal system may not interfere with the understanding and feelings until almost the last moments ; but they are such as do not involve those divisions with which, thought is believed to be more immediately connected : we may instance tetanus. But although in these maladies we do occasionally observe considerable intellec tual soundness till within a very short period of death, we have far more commonly been able to detect some degree of delirium, an exaltation of one part of the mental constitution at the expense of the others. Excitement of
the imagination has,-we doubt not, been fre quently mistaken for general mental vigour. We should place such instances, however, far below those in Nvhich there remains sufficient steadines-s of the understanding to direct the provisions of a will; though by many observers such a condition of the intellect would be con sidered a far slighter evidence of the triumphs of mind over matter, than the impassioned expressions to which the dying man sometimes gives utterance, when describing the visions of liis phantasy.
The delirium of the dying is often of a most interesting character, and resembles dreaming more than any other form of demngement that has fallen under our notice. The ideas are derived less from present perceptions than in insanity, and yet are more suggested by ex ternal circumstances than in the delirium of fever and plirenitis. Thus the sight of a by stander often suggests the image of a friend long departed, in which character the mori bund man addresses him, and talks earnestly of persons, scenes, and events belonging to a. former period of his history as if still present. The vivified conceptions are generally derived from subjects which either in his speculative pursuits, or in the business of life, have princi pally occupied his thoughts. The last words of Dr. Armstrong were addressed to an ima ginary patient upon whom he was impressing the necessity of' attention to the state of the digestive organs. We have heard that a great legal officer not long deceased, having raised himself for a moment from his couch, said with his wonted dignity, " Gentlemen of the jury, you will find,"—and then fell back on his pillow and expired. The visual conceptions reproduced in some minds often appear to have been derived from poetical reading. We re member hearing a young man, who had been but little conversant with any but civic scenes, discourse most eloquently a short time before death, of " sylvan glen and bosky dell," pur ling streams, and happy valleys ; " babbling of green fields," as if his spirit had been already recreating itself in the gardens of Elysium. It not unfrequently happens that the spectra owe their origin to contemplations of future existence; and consequently that the good man's last hours are cheered with beatific visions and communion with heavenly visitors.