Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.

the various phenomena of death. From his extended researches in this direction, Dr. Sequard lays down the proposition that " every cause of excitement in the nerves and muscles must dis- turb their forces, and therefore acts in such a manner as to di- minish the quantity (which means the power) of those forces that are found in the individual from moment to moment, and that in the exact proportion as this excitement is the more or less energetic." Hence he concludes, that lightning kills by ex- hausting the whole quantity of the dynamic forces, that are at that moment possessed by the animal economy ; and therefore life must cease, because the vital acts cannot be maintained one moment without them. He supposes death to take place by asphyxia, or, as we may say, by absolute collapse; as after the extremely violent contraction of all the respiratory muscles, which is found to be produced at the instant of being struck by the electric shock, so that there is no spring left, no rebound of the natural electric polarity of the molecular structure of the nerves and muscles, for they are in fact totally exhausted and disor- ganized. This he illustrates by killing animals with the dis- charge of a powerful battery. He has found that if the dis- charge is directed through the diaphragm, it kills quicker and more surely than when directed through the head of the animal. It is also noticed that an animal so killed always opens its mouth in a few moments after the death stroke, as if gasping for breath, as it probably is; but there being no responsive motion of the thorax, this is scarcely repeated, and soon ceases altogether. The post mortem, shows a fluid state of the blood, and there is a general state of congestion in the liver, spleen, and cerebral ves- sels ; while the lungs and the cavities of the heart are nearly empty! This is very different from that state of the heart found after death by chloroform, for there the left ventricle is enormously distended. It would seem from this, that after the diaphragm and heart gave their last great contraction under the stimulus of the lightning, there was no sort of dilating property left; that the body is now only a disorganized mass, ready for immediate putrefaction. M. Boudin, a French philosopher who has made this particular