Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

THE RENEWAL OF LIFE.

RIZPAH the daughter of Aiah watched for six months, from "the beginning of barley - harvest" in April, to the rainy season in October, to guard her kinsmen's corpses from the beasts of prey. So long under the sky of Palestine did they continue an attraction to the wild dogs and birds. In a moister air decay is quicker, but still not so quick as is often supposed. The observations of M. Devergie * on the bodies at the Morgue, show that, two months and a half after decease, the muscular structures still preserve their natural form and colour. Up to three months and a half, the scalp, eyelids, and nose so far retain their ordinary appearance that the age of the individual may be told. It is four months and a half before complete destruction of the face occurs, or the bones become brittle, and the bulky muscles of the neck and thighs are converted into adipocere. So that we may reckon three months and a half as a short period to be occupied by the decomposition of the form of a human body. So long does flesh remain flesh, and tissue tissue, and is not resolved into its mother earth.

Let us escape quickly from these shuddering scenes of the charnelhouse to the joyous bustle of brimming life. How long does it take a living body to decay? "A living body decay?" Yes, in truth; but whereas, in the former case, decay was a thing to make men shiver, the fading of a long-loved image, the tearing up of a fair garment, the ruin of a darling home, the violation of a worshipped shrine, the forcible divorce from our nearest and dearest-it is all this and more; in the latter it is associated with the fullest fruition of all that is joyous in existence-the bound

[ocr errors]

ing pulse, the free-drawn breath, the swelling chest, the thrilling sense of health, the highest uses of mind and body. Decay, in fact, is more truly a part of life than it is of death; for it continues unstayed through the whole of corporeal existence; whereas, after dissolution, it gradually ceases, and ends its work with the conversion of the organic particles into unaltering eternal elements. The most truly living body is the most active in decay; the more bodily and mental vigour are displayed, the more quickly do the various tissues melt down into substances which are without delay removed by the excreting organs. The more the navvy works his arms and the statesman his brain, the heavier bulk of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen is thrown out by lungs, liver, skin, kidneys, &c. Does he, then, wear them out by this constant friction and drain? No, no; the more the bricks are removed from the old wall, the more new bricks will a good builder put in; and so, provided that the supply is sufficient-that the builder is a good one-the more rapid the drain, the newer and stronger and better will the body become.

Let us try and reckon how long it takes, by living decay, for the living body to be drained away, and to have its substance renewed. In the ghastly details recounted at the commencement of this paper, the nitrogenous fleshy parts were most accounted of as giving form and the general appearance of a man to the poor dissolving corpse. So of the nitrogenous parts we will now speak: how long are they being removed by vital decomposition?

We may reckon with Drs Bidder and Schmidt † that an animal body contains 35.45 grammes of nitrogen per kilogramme; and, therefore,

* Devergie, Médicine Légale,' t. ii. chap. 5. +'Die Verdauungssäfte und der Stoffwechsel,' p. 400.

that an animal of 130 lb., the mean weight of a man, contains 4.6 lb. of nitrogen.

Then again, taking our numbers from an equally sound and independent source, we may estimate with Baron Liebig that the liquid and solid excreta of a man by kidneys and bowels for a year contains 16.41 lb. of nitrogen, or for three months and a half, 4.7 lb. of nitrogen.

That is to say, that in three months and a half a quantity of nitrogen is removed by excretion, or vital decay, equal to that contained in the whole bulk of the chief nitrogenous tissue.

What attraction has this term of three months and a half for us?— what memories does it rouse? Why, that was the very time we fixed upon for the fleshy framework of the corpse to melt away in. Here is a pregnant fact, a light thrown on the mysteries of nature from a most unpromising source! Dead flesh and living flesh last as nearly as possible the same time-the former, if anything, rather the longest. As far as we can judge, the albumen, fibrin, gelatin, &c., which make up the live body, differ in nowise from the same matters dead; they are liable to the same changes, affected by the same reagents, and naturally are resolved into their elements in the same time; just as the stone in a statue or a wall is to a mineralogist the same stone as it was in the quarry, liable to the same accidents, and possessed of the same properties, though temporarily endowed with a different value.

What, then, elevates to the dignity of living creatures, and gives loveliness to, the masses of organic matter which are growing, moving, breathing, thinking, all around us It is the power of the individual life to create and retain its own special and individual form. A man has no right of property over the particles of his body, except so long as they remain particles of his

body, and retain his form. He hardly calls his the snippings of his hair or the parings of his nails, much less the carbonic acid he exhales from his lungs or skin; all that he throws off is by common consent claimed as a perquisite by the public; and the battle-fields which he has fertilised with his kindred's blood enrich not him, but the fortunate proprietor. Yet as long as these organic constituents retain the form impressed upon them by the individual life, they are more truly his than any portion of his inheritance.

It is then the form, the individual and indivisible life, which constitutes the Self; and it is not the changing, decaying matter which

66

was mine, is his, and may be slave to thousands." The organic materials are the property of the form so long as it retains them; they are a floating capital. Over the innate essential nature of the material it has no control. Life cannot make the brute matter which it uses last longer than what it leaves unused, but it has the power of making them anew, and building them up into a certain shape for the period of their assigned duration. In short, LIFE IS RENEWAL.

66

To speak, therefore, of "a superabundance of life," or of an excess of vital action," is a contradiction in terms. There cannot be too active a renewal of the tissues, for the fresher their organic constituents, the more serviceable they are, and the longer duration they have before them. There cannot be too close an adherence to that typical form which it is the business of renewal to keep up, any more than there can be too exact an obedience to law or order.

The most active renewal of the body possible, the highest possible development of life in every part, is HEALTH.

The complete cessation of renewal is DEATH.

* Chemistry of Agriculture and Physiology,' part i. chap. ix.

The partial cessation, or arrest, is DISEASE.

In Death the flesh goes on being decomposed as during life; but, not being renewed, the form is lost entirely. In Disease, decomposition goes on, but life, or renewal, flags, and the decomposing wearing-out tissues are not properly pushed out by new-formed substance. They are retained as part of the imperfect body-a sort of "death in life" and are rightly termed by the pathologist "degenerate." They are generated, but not re-generated; they are generated in an inferior mould of form.

Take as an example what happens sometimes to red flesh or muscle. We all know that if an animal's limbs are duly employed, the muscles keep up their shape and their vigorous power of contraction; their tissue is of a rich bright-red colour when the animal is fully grown, and is firm and elastic. Examine it under a microscope of pretty high power-say with a quarter-inch object-glass — and you will find it made up of even parallel fibres, each fibre seeming to be engraved ever with delicate equidistant cross-markings, like a measuring-tape very minutely divided. The more the muscle has been used in a well-nourished frame, the more closely it conforms to the typical specimen of the physiologist; "Use, use is life; and he most truly lives

Who uses best."

But suppose this muscular fibre has been unemployed-suppose it is in the biceps of an Indian fakeer, who has fastened his arm upright till it has become immovable, or the gluteus of a one-legged soldier, or the calf of a Chinese belle, or in a paralysed limb-then the flesh is quite different in aspect; it is flabby and inelastic, of a pale yellowish hue, and makes greasy streaks on the knife that cuts it. Sometimes even all traces of fibres have disappeared, and it is converted into an unhealthy fat. Sometimes you may trace fibres under the microscope, but their outline is bulging

and irregular, the cross-markings are wanting, and you see dark refracting globules of oily matter in them instead. In short, the muscle is degenerating into fat, retaining in a great measure its shape, but losing its substance. Such is, by God's law, the penal consequence of not using His gifts for four or five months.

66

Now, go back to our first sepulchral illustrations. M. Devergie found that, in a period of between four and five months, the flesh of a corpse is converted into a substance technically termed adipocere ;" that is, an oleaginous substance between fat and wax-an artificial fat of chemical decomposition. This is exactly the same as happened to the disused muscle in the case just quoted. At the Morgue, a stream of water washes away the fetid gases from the subject of M. Devergie's observations, and in the living body destructive absorption and excretion remove the more directly noxious particles; in both there remains the same oleaginous residuum.

The instance chosen of diseased structure was purposely an extreme one; but even there, a very advanced degree of partial death was seen not to be inconsistent with life. A minor degree is by no means inconsistent even with utility and a certain performance of duty. Look at a man whom his physician knows to have a weak or slightly-dilated heart; he goes on with his profession, mixes in society, enjoys his quiet pleasures, and may even insure his life by paying an extra premium. Yet, if an accident at any time should cut him off suddenly, the muscular tissue of the heart is found pale and soft, and under the microscope the fibres are deficient in clear outline and in cross-markings, and exhibit here and there minute specks of that fatty degeneration which was so conspicuous to the naked eye in M. Devergie's subjects, and in the completely paralysed limb. The more dilated and the more weak

the heart, the more widespread is this degeneration. Yet enough active structure is left to carry on the work of the heart, and perhaps to prolong life to its allotted threescore years and ten.

A close imitation of the pathological process may be made by soaking a piece of muscle, say from a healthy sheep's heart, in a running stream, in weak spirits and water, or in nitric acid and water, for a few weeks, when sections made from time to time will exhibit the several stages of fatty degeneration, from the minute specks in the scarcely-altered muscle up to complete conversion into adipocere.

Remark now, that in these cases of fatty degeneration or decay, that which replaces the highly-organised animal matter is not utterly inorganic. It is less organised, and less organisable, but still capable of being called alive. Fat is part of our living bodies, and a necessary part; but still it is not capable of performing the highly vital duties of muscular tissue, of being as thoroughly alive. Degenerated products, therefore, as long as they form part of the body, may still be said to be alive, but less alive than the normal tissues they replace; and degenerate growth may be justly described as "diminished life; or, in the words of a former paragraph, "partial death." Degeneration, in short, is a relapse into a lower form of organic life, and exhibits itself, therefore, in a variety of grades and amounts. Occurring in various parts, it occasions a good half of the chronic illnesses which give work to the physician.

[ocr errors]

Let it be well understood that these half-living tissues are by no means necessarily diminished in size. A battered, tinkered vessel is often much bulkier than a strong new one; and so these imperfectly nourished parts are often enlarged, and so have been wrongly supposed to be over-nourished. They often attain a most cumbrous weight and bigness without really containing enough available to do their work.

They become, in truth, a foreign substance. Sometimes they acquire what seems almost like a parasitic life, and grow, as it were, independent of the body which they exist in. Then they are justly looked upon with a peculiarly unfavourable eye, and are called by the epithet "malignant." Cancer is the best-known example to quote; and if the reader has ever watched its fatally-rapid increase, he is perhaps wondering that it should be put forward as an instance of diminished vitality. But let him watch further; he will see that it never acquires the higher characteristics of life; it never puts on the form of the part it is planted in, nor performs its duties. Moreover, its halflife, so easily acquired and so easily multiplied, is also easily lost. Its very tendency to die and to ulcerate is one of the chief dangers in which it puts the individual.

We must not, however, speak only of these dreadful afflictions of humanity, or our reader will think it is a subject with which he has no concern. We must come to more home matters. Doubtless it will be a shock to him to be told that, whenever he is the least ill, he has temporarily lost some of his life; some portion of him is more dead than it ought to be. Poohpooh the idea as he will, he had better get used to it, for it is true; and if he wishes to know anything of the nature of disease, it must be his leading principle. To familiarise his mind to it, we will take, as the next example, a nice common form of partial death, which he is sure to experience in a few weeks' time, and may then employ his leisure in thinking over these pages. Let our gentle reader "catch a cold" in his head, or his chest, or his throat, as he pleases. What is the consequence? If he looks at the back of the fauces in a mirror, he will see the surface red, puffy, and with the component parts, such as the uvula, enlarged. There is also poured out a quantity of slimy material, which

[ocr errors]

his doctor calls "mucus," and which he coughs, or hawks, or blows off as the case may be. "Halloa!" he cries; "here surely is an active business going on; everything seems much more lively than usual; life is increased, not diminished." Not so fast. Let him examine in a microscope a little of this mucus, and he will find it to consist mainly of minute balls of jelly of a granular aspect, which are technically called mucous and pus globules," floating quite free, and rolling over and over without any tendency to adhere together. Are these bodies something quite new, something which an inflamed membrane can produce, while a healthy one lacks the power? By no means; for they have been identified with those elementary forms of nascent life by which all organic matters grow; they are young cells. They are the form assumed by all liquid living material which, under the influence of life, is being transformed in a solid. They are a baby tissue strangled in its birth. Instead of uniting to clothe with a delicate skin, which anatomists call "epithelium,' the surface of the membrane, they float off helpless from deficient vitality.

[ocr errors]

If our reader cannot manage to catch a cold, let him have a whitlow on his finger, or a boil, and study how the nail is stayed in its growth, and the skin killed; while the materials intended to renew them are . arrested in their development, and go to be deposited as pus or matter, a concentrated form of unvitalised fluid very similar in every respect

to mucus.

But he may ask, What is that redness and throbbing of the inflamed part? does not it show an increased circulation of the vital fluid, and therefore increased life? No more than the crowds in Fleet Street on Lord Mayor's Day show the activity of City business. On the contrary, the membrane is red because its blood-vessels are relaxed and dilated from loss of vital elasticity; the blood sticks in them as water in a

bulged pipe; and the throng of blood, pushed on behind by the heart, throbs because of the obstruction.

"But the pain,—does not that show that the vital power of sensibility is increased? I cannot, in general, feel that I have got a finger or a throat; and now my whitlow and my cold remind me most disagreeably of the fact." No; pain does not indicate an increase of sensibility; in this case it is associated with a very marked decrease. In your catarrh the membrane of the fauces loses its delicate power of distinguishing flavours-everything tastes equally nasty. And your inflamed finger-tip is wanting in sensibility too: try it, and you will find, for any delicate work, such as feeling the fine lines of a copperplate, or the flaws in a polished surface, it fails in its duty. Pain, in fact, is a sure evidence of deficient vitality; a painful part is never performing its vital functions properly.

The same partial death, which has been hitherto described as constituting the various diseased states of the solid structures of the body, may attack also the fluids; and in them, as in the solids, may be exhibited either as a destructive relapse into a less organic life, or as an arrest of development. The poison of fever, for example, destroys and renders useless as nutriment some constituents of the blood; the insufficient blood is circulated to all parts of the body, causing, not local pain, but general malaise by its deficient vitality. The half-poisoned tissues allow the poisoned material to ooze through them, causing diarrhoeas, exhalations of blood, purple blotches on the skin, and a general staining of the whole surface of a dusky hue. If the quantity of blood poisoned is moderate, it can be easily spared; it is carried off gradually by excretions, and its place is filled up in time by new blood. But if the rare case happens of so much being poisoned at once, that

« AnteriorContinuar »